Coca-Cola
| The official Coca-Cola logo | |
| Type | Cola |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | The Coca-Cola Company |
| Country of origin | USA |
| Introduced | 1886 |
| Variants | Coca-Cola Classic |
| Related products | Pepsi-Cola, Mecca Cola, OpenCola |
| Website | www |
Coca-Cola is a carbonated cola soft drink, produced by the The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) of Atlanta, Georgia. The beverage is widely referred to as Coke, a nickname eventually trademarked by the company. Coke is one of the world's most recognizable and widely sold commercial brands.
Originally intended as a patent medicine when it was invented in the late-19th century, Coca-Cola was acquired by the businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose shrewd marketing tactics led Coke to its world-wide soft drink market dominance during the twentieth century. Though beset periodically by critiques of its health effects and by allegations of wrongdoing by the company, Coca-Cola has remained an internationally popular soft drink.
History
Early years
Columbus, Georgia druggist John Stith Pemberton invented a cocawine called Pemberton's French Wine Coca in 1884. He was inspired by the formidable success of French Angelo Mariani's cocawine, Vin Mariani.
The following year, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed Prohibition legislation, Pemberton began to develop a non-alcoholic version of the French Wine Coca. He named it Coca-Cola, because it included the stimulant coca leaves from South America and was flavored using kola nuts, a source of caffeine. Pemberton called for 5 ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup. The first sales were made at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886, and for the first eight months only an average of nine drinks were sold each day. Pemberton ran the first advertisement for the beverage on May 29 that year in the Atlanta Journal.
Coca-Cola was initially sold as a patent medicine for five cents a glass. Although Pemberton intended it to be mixed with still water, it was sold at soda fountains, which were popular in the United States at the time thanks to a belief that carbonated water was good for the health. Pemberton claimed Coca-Cola cured myriad diseases, including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence.
In 1887, while suffering from an ongoing addiction to morphine, Pemberton sold a stake in his company to Asa Griggs Candler, who incorporated it as the Coca Cola Corporation in 1888. In the same year, Pemberton sold the rights a second time to three more businessmen: J.C. Mayfield, A.O. Murphey, and E.H. Bloodworth. Meanwhile, Pemberton's alcoholic son Charley Pemberton began selling his own version of the product. Three versions of Coca-Cola — sold by three separate businesses — were on the market. [1]
In an attempt to clarify the situation, John Pemberton declared that the name Coca-Cola belonged to Charley, but the other two manufacturers could continue to use the formula. So, in the summer of 1888, Candler sold his beverage under the names Yum Yum and Koke. After both failed to catch on, Candler set out to establish a legal claim to Coca-Cola in late 1888, in order to force his two competitors out of the business. Candler apparently purchased exclusive rights to the formula from John Pemberton, Margaret Dozier, and Woolfolk Walker. However, in 1914, Dozier came forward to claim her signature on the bill of sale had been forged, and subsequent analysis has indicated John Pemberton's signature was most likely a forgery as well.[2]
In 1892, Candler incorporated a second company, The Coca-Cola Company (the current corporation), and in 1910 Candler had the earliest records of the company burned, further obscuring its legal origins. Regardless, Candler began aggressively marketing the product — the efficiency of this concerted advertising campaign would not be realized until much later.
Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time on March 12, 1894, and cans of Coke first appeared in 1955. The first bottling of Coca-Cola occurred in Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the Biedenharn Candy Company in 1891. Its proprietor was Joseph A. Biedenharn. The original bottles were Biedenharn bottles, very different from the much later hobble-skirt design that is now so familiar. Asa Candler was tentative about bottling the drink, but the two entrepreneurs who proposed the idea were so persuasive that Candler signed a contract giving them control of the procedure. However, the loosely termed contract proved to be problematic for the company for decades to come. Legal matters were not helped by the decision of the bottlers to subcontract to other companies — in effect, becoming parent bottlers. This meant that Coca-Cola was originally sold in a wide variety of bottles, until the introduction of the iconic, standardized Coke bottle in 1916.
World War II
When the United States entered World War II, The Coca-Cola Company began providing free drinks for soldiers of the United States Army. Due to sugar rationing during the war, Coca-Cola did not have enough sugar to produce drinks at full capacity. A deal was struck between the US government and Coca-Cola whereby the company was exempted from sugar rationing, while Coca-Cola supplied refreshments for the troops. The deal also stopped Pepsi from getting more than its rations as the military needed no more soft drinks. The United States Army permitted Coca-Cola employees to enter the front lines as "Technical Officers" where they operated Coke's system of providing refreshments for soldiers, who welcomed the beverage as a reminder of home. After the war, the soldiers brought home their newfound taste for Coca-Cola, popularising the drink.
The difficulty of shipping Coca-Cola concentrate to Germany and its occupied states, due to the Allied blockades, led to the creation of a new drink by a Coca-Cola employee, Fanta. In this fashion Coca-Cola was able to continue trading in Nazi Germany (as did automobile manufacturer Ford) long after other US companies had relocated on moral grounds.
New Coke to the present
In 1984, Coca-Cola, amid much publicity, changed the formula of the drink. Some authorities believe that New Coke, as the reformulated drink came to be known, was invented specifically to respond to its commercial competitor, Pepsi. Numerous blind taste tests suggested that more consumers preferred the taste of Pepsi (which is believed to have more lemon oil, less orange oil, and uses vanillin rather than vanilla) to Coke. In taste tests, drinkers were more likely to respond positively to sweeter drinks, and Pepsi had the advantage over Coke because it is much sweeter. Coca-Cola tinkered with the formula and created the new Coke. Follow-up taste tests revealed that most consumers preferred the taste of New Coke to both Coke and Pepsi. The reformulation was led by the then-CEO of the company, Roberto Goizueta, and the president Don Keough.
It is unclear what part long-time company president Robert W. Woodruff played in the reformulation. Goizueta claims that Woodruff endorsed it a few months before his death in 1985; others have pointed out that, as the two men were alone when the matter was discussed, Goizueta might have misinterpreted the wishes of the dying Woodruff, who could speak only in monosyllables. It has also been alleged that Woodruff might not have been able to understand what Goizueta was telling him.
The New Coke therefore came as a grievous blow to the management of The Coca-Cola Company. It is possible that customers would not have noticed the change if it had been made secretly or gradually, and thus brand loyalty could have been maintained. Coca-Cola management was unprepared, however, for the nostalgic sentiments the drink aroused in the American public; some compared changing the Coke formula to rewriting the American Constitution.
The new Coca-Cola formula subsequently caused a public backlash. Consumers began buying up and hoarding supplies of Old Coke, before it disappeared forever. Gay Mullins, from Seattle, Washington, founded the Old Cola Drinkers of America organization, which attempted to sue the company, and lobbied for the formula of Old Coke to be released into the public domain. This and other protests caused the company to return to the old formula under the name Coca-Cola Classic on July 10, 1985. The company was later accused of performing this volte-face as an elaborate ruse to introduce a new product while reviving interest in the original. Donald Keough, company president at the time, responded to the accusation by declaring: "Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart."
The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest consumer of natural vanilla extract. When New Coke was introduced in 1985, this had a severe impact on the economy of Madagascar, a prime vanilla exporter, since New Coke used vanillin, a less-expensive synthetic substitute. Purchases of vanilla more than halved during this period. But the flop of New Coke brought a recovery.
Meanwhile, the market share for New Coke had dwindled to only 3% by 1986. In 1992 the company renamed the product "Coke II" (not to be confused with "Coke C2", a reduced-sugar cola launched by Coca-Cola in 2004). However, sales falloff caused a severe cutback in distribution. By 1998, it was sold in only a few places in the Midwestern U.S.
Coca-Cola formula
As a publicity marketing strategy started by Robert W. Woodruff, the company presents the formula of Coca-Cola as one of the most closely held trade secrets in modern business that only a few employees know or have access to. In particular, the secret ingredient "7X" has long been touted an integral component of Coca Cola's formula though it has never been established what, if anything, the "X" refers to-- although it has been stated that Coca Cola had employees mix the drink by numbers assigned to specific ingredients rather than by name, to avoid the possibility of employees reverse-engineering the recipe. However, experienced perfumers and food scientists - today aided by modern analytical methods - can easily identify the composition of food products, a fact that is further supported by the many cola flavorings and competing soft drinks like Pepsi.
Franchised production model
The actual production and distribution of Coca-Cola follows a franchising model. The Coca-Cola Company only produces a syrup concentrate, which it sells to various bottlers throughout the world who hold Coca-Cola franchises for one or more geographical areas. The bottlers produce the final drink by mixing the syrup with filtered water and sugar (or artificial sweeteners) and fill it into cans and bottles, which the bottlers then sell and distribute to retail stores, vending machines, restaurants and food service distributors. The bottlers are normally also responsible for all advertisement and other sales initiatives within their areas.
The Coca-Cola Company owns minority shares in some of its largest franchisees, like Coca-Cola Enterprises and Coca-Cola FEMSA, but almost half of the volume sold in the world is produced by fully independent bottlers.
As sugar and sweeteners are added by the bottler, the sweetness of the drink is said to differ in various parts of the world, in order to cater for local taste.
Coca-Cola design
The famous Coca-Cola logotype is said to have largely been created by John Pemberton's business partner, Frank Mason Robinson, in 1885. It was Robinson who came up with the name, and he also chose the logo’s distinctive cursive script. The typeface used, known as Spencerian script, was developed in the mid 19th century and was the dominant form of formal handwriting in the United States during that period.
The equally famous Coca-Cola bottle, called the "Contour bottle" within the company, was created in 1915 by a Swedish former glassblower, Alexander Samuelsson, who had emigrated to the US in the 1880's and was employed as a manager at The Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, one of Coca-Cola's bottle suppliers. According to legend, having received the request for a truly distinctive bottle from bottler Benjamin F. Thomas, Samuelsson decided to see if the shapes of the two ingredients behind the product name (coca and kola nuts) could serve as inspiration. Two of his employees (Clyde Edwards and Earl Dean) went to the city library to look up information about those two items. A misunderstanding occurred, leading the men to examine the wrong page of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The sketches they returned with were from the cacao tree seed pod, with its bulging shape and distinctive grooves.
In November 1915, Root Glass Company patented the bottle, and in 1916 it went into production. It is said that Chapman J. Root of Terre Haute, the owner of Root Glass, became one of Indiana's wealthiest men because of the bottle, while Samuelsson did not get anything more than his usual salary.
Coca-Cola's advertising
Coca-Cola's advertising has had a significant impact on American culture, and is frequently credited with the "invention" of the modern image of Santa Claus as an old man in red-and-white garments; however, while the company did in fact start promoting this image in the 1930s in its winter advertising campaigns, it was already common before that.[3] In the 1970s, a song from a Coca-Cola commercial called "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", produced by Billy Davis, became a popular hit single, but there is no evidence that it did anything to increase sales of the soft drink. Coke's advertising has been rather pervasive, as one of Woodruff's stated goals was to ensure that everyone on Earth drank Coca-Cola as their preferred beverage. Advertising for Coke is now almost ubiquitous, especially in southern areas of North America, such as Atlanta, where Coke was invented.
Coca-Cola has gone through a number of different advertising slogans in its long history, including "The pause that refreshes", "I would like to buy the world a Coke", and "Coke is it" (see Coca-Cola slogans).
Recent history
During the 1980s, Pepsi-Cola ran a series of television advertisements showing people participating in taste tests in which they expressed a preference for Pepsi over Coke. Coca-Cola ran ads to combat Pepsi's ads in an incident sometimes referred to as the cola wars; one of Coke's ads compared the so-called Pepsi challenge to two chimpanzees deciding which tennis ball was furrier. Thereafter, Coca-Cola regained its leadership in the market.
In an attempt to broaden its portfolio, Coca-Cola purchased Columbia Pictures in 1982. Columbia provided subtle publicity through Coke product placements in many of its films while under Coke's ownership. However, after a few early successes, Columbia began to under-perform, and was dropped by the company in 1989.
International appeal
Coca-Cola is the best-selling soft drink in most countries. Nevertheless, there are some places like New York state in the United States of America, where Pepsi leads the market; Texas, in the USA, where Dr Pepper is the number one soft drink; and Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island in Canada, where Pepsi is the market leader.[citation needed] In Peru, Inca Kola, the "national beverage" (independently produced until 1999, when Coca-Cola acquired Corporación Inca Kola del Perú S.A., the Peruvian company that formerly produced it) is more popular.[1] In Sweden, despite Coca-Cola's strong holiday-oriented marketing efforts, Julmust outsells Coca-Cola during the Christmas season.[2] In Scotland, the locally produced Irn-Bru was more popular until 2005 when it was outsold by both Coca-Cola and Diet Coke[3].
It is often repeated as an urban legend that the Coca-Cola company mistranslated its product's name into a string of characters meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" while attempting to market the product in Chinese. In reality, some local Chinese shopkeepers did create their own signs in an effort to approximate the sound of the product's name, resulting in kǒukē-kǒulà (口蝌口蜡), which might more literally be translated as "mouth tadpole, mouth wax". However, the Coca-Cola company itself never adopted such a translation. After reviewing all of the possible soundalikes, the company officially adopted kěkǒu-kělè (可口可乐), meaning roughly "to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice".
Notes
- ^ Mark Pendergrast (2000). For God, Country and Coca-Cola. Basic Books. pp. 41–45. ISBN 0465054684.
- ^ Pages 45–47: (Pendergrast, 2000)
- ^ Barbara Mikkelson and David P. Mikkelson, "The Claus That Refreshes," snopes.com, February 27, 2001 (accessed June 10, 2005).
See also
- Odwalla
- The Coca-Cola Company
- The World of Coca-Cola
- Soft drink
- Pepsi-Cola (competitor)
- Jolt Cola
- OpenCola
- Mecca Cola
- Julmust
Brands owned by Coca-Cola
External links
- Official Coca-Cola website
- Official Coca-Cola (Hong Kong) website
- Official Coca-Cola (Hong Kong) website -- We all speak football
- Ronen Liwski's Coca-Cola Cans Collection
- The Straight Dope: Is it true Coca-Cola once contained cocaine?
- Coca-Cola urban legends (or not)
- Coca-Cola Myths & Rumors
- [4]Coca-Cola television advertisements from the motion picture archive at the Library of Congress (needed software: Windows, Mac: [5]Quick Time - Windows: [6]Media Player)
- Article: Mexican Coca Cola popular in United States
- Why Coke uses High Fructose Corn Syrup
