With people in nearly 200 countries downing Coca-Cola, it’s no wonder the soft drink has become the world’s most valuable brand—and the most recognized product on the planet. More than one billion Coca-Cola products are being consumed every day!
Coca-Cola was discovered when John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, began to mix together the ingredients that would later become Coca-Cola, his intention was not to create a soft drink at all but a tonic for headaches.
After sampling his tonic, Pemberton decided to take it to Jacobs’ Pharmacy, the largest drugstore in Atlanta, where the manager agreed to mix it with water and sell it at his soda fountain for five cents a glass. Pemberton’s business partner, Frank Robinson, suggested the name “Coca-Cola”
As Jacobs’ Pharmacy continued to sell Coca-Cola, someone added carbonated water to the drink in place of plain water, and customers who tried the new bubbly drink liked it even better. Soon, Coca-Cola was being sold as a carbonated beverage in soda fountains around Atlanta.
By 1891, Candler had bought out the shares of the business, spending a total of $ 2,300, and he formed the Coca-Cola Company the next year.
In 1899, Candler was approached with the idea of bottling Coca-Cola, when two lawyers from Tennessee, Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead, asked him for exclusive rights to bottle and sell the beverage.
In the early 1900s, bottling plants were even established outside the U.S., in such places as Cuba, Panama, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
The year 1919 also saw new ownership of the Coca-Cola Company when a group of investors led by Atlanta banker Ernest Woodruff bought it for $25 million.
In April 1923, the Coca-Cola Company again faced change as Woodruff’s son Robert Winship Woodruff was elected president. In addition to guaranteeing the quality of Coca-Cola, Woodruff also wanted to make the product easier to purchase. Woodruff sought to make Coca-Cola a part of everyone’s daily life.
In May 1950, Time magazine acknowledged Coca-Cola’s worldwide success with a cover story entitled “World and Friend.” The cover of the magazine featured an image of a red Coca-Cola disk serving a bottle of Coke to a happy globe, and the text of the article applauded Coca-Cola’s efforts to spread the “American way of life.”
Robert Woodruff announced in 1955 that he was retiring, having reached the company’s mandatory retirement age of 65. Although former newspaper publisher Bill Robinson took over as the company’s president, Woodruff remained on the board of directors and served as chairman of the finance committee, where he continued to wield considerable power. In fact, after his retirement, Woodruff moved into an even bigger office in the company’s Atlanta headquarters building, where he continued to go every day until he was in his 80s.
Until 1960, the Coca-Cola Company sold only one product: Coca-Cola. But that year, the company decided to expand its drink offerings by adding Fanta. Also in 1960, the Coca-Cola Company acquired the Minute Maid Corporation and added frozen juice concentrates to its lineup. The next year, the company introduced the citrus-flavoured soft drink Sprite, and in 1963, it brought out its first low-calorie soft drink, called TAB.
In 1988, three independent surveys found that Coca-Cola was the world’s best-known and most admired trademark. A similar survey in 1990 showed that Coke was the most successful brand name in the world.
With so many beverages being sold in so many countries, the Coca-Cola bottling system is today one of the largest production and distribution systems in the world. As of 2006, the company—including the bottling plants it owns—employed 70,000 people, 49,000 of them outside of the U.S. Independent bottlers employed thousands more.