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Coca Cola Enterprises, Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History
1 Coca-Cola Plaza Northwest
Atlanta, Georgia 30313
U.S.A.
History of Coca Cola Enterprises, Inc.
The largest bottling group owned by The Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. produces, markets, and distributes the carbonated soft drinks of its 49 percent owner, The Coca-Cola Company. During the mid-1990s, Coca-Cola Enterprises sold beverages in 38 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Netherlands.
Among the collection of bottling operations composing Coca-Cola Enterprises during the 1990s, the oldest traced its roots back to 1889, when one of the most incredible and profitable transactions in U.S. business history occurred. That year, three years after the first Coca-Cola drink mixture was concocted, two lawyers from Chattanooga, Tennessee, bought the exclusive rights to sell America's newest beverage, Coca-Cola, in bottles. For what retrospectively ranks as one of the biggest bargains in the annals of business history, the two lawyers together paid $1 for Coca-Cola's exclusive bottling rights, giving the investors what would a century later evolve into a multi-billion dollar enterprise for having paid two quarters apiece.
Based on the actions the two entrepreneurs took immediately after investing their $1, they did have some idea of the fortune they had just acquired. With the help of financier John T. Lupton, the two lawyers divided the country into small territories and sold regional rights of the sale of Coca-Cola to other entrepreneurs, thus beginning the development of an intricate and massive network of Coca-Cola bottlers.
The franchising of Coca-Cola bottling operations, superintended by John T. Lupton, made fortunes for many independent bottlers, most notably for Lupton himself and his heirs, as the web of bottling operations spread across the country, embracing every corner of the nation. For The Coca-Cola Company, the relationship with its bottlers was a profitable one: The company marketed its product, then sold Coca-Cola concentrate to bottlers who performed the less profitable task of sweetening and carbonating the syrup, packaging it, then distributing it to retailers. Working as such, the process of making and selling Coca-Cola grew into an enormous business, profiting The Coca-Cola Company and, to a lesser extent, the independent, regionally-based Coca-Cola bottlers. The Coca-Cola empire functioned in this manner for nearly the next century.
Although The Coca-Cola Company maintained some ownership of the bottling of its product, an overwhelming majority of the bottling of Coca-Cola was performed by the independent bottlers who were first ceded bottling rights by Lupton and the two Chattanooga lawyers. In 1944, the predecessor to the Coca-Cola Enterprises company that operated during the 1990s was formed as a wholly owned subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Company to manage the small portion of bottling operations directly owned by its parent company. This company was deactivated in 1970, then reactivated 16 years later, in 1986, when almost coincidental developments forced The Coca-Cola Company to jump into the bottling business in an aggressive manner. The result was Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., a nearly $3 billion bottling operation comprising a majority of the independent bottling companies that had packaged and distributed Coca-Cola in cans and bottles for more than the previous half century.
Truly a modern creation despite its links to 1944 and 1899, Coca-Cola Enterprises was formed as more of solution to developments in the soft drink industry that begged a response than as a strategic maneuver effected by The Coca-Cola Company. The origins of Coca-Cola Enterprises may be traced to early 1986, when the descendants of John T. Lupton, lead by an ancestor of the same name, initiated negotiations with The Coca-Cola Company about selling their bottling operations which were the largest of the soft drink company's sundry independent bottlers.
The company, headed by the latest John T. Lupton, and aptly named JTL Corporation, began negotiating with The Coca-Cola Company in January 1986 about selling its bottling operations to the diversified soft drink giant. The Coca-Cola Company at this point owned bottling operations that constituted roughly 11 percent of its domestic sales volume, to which the addition of JTL's bottling operations, located in Texas, Florida, Colorado, and Arizona, would add another 14 percent, giving the Coca-Cola Company direct control over one quarter of its domestic sales volume. JTL, with $1 billion in estimated 1985 sales, represented a significant acquisition for The Coca-Cola Company; it would bring the company's bottling ownership more in line with rival PepsiCo Inc., which had always owned a sizeable portion of its bottling operations.
Negotiations between JTL and The Coca-Cola Company continued throughout January, 1986 with an agreement to merge reached before the end of the month. As negotiations to complete the merger carried into February, another large Coca-Cola bottling operation became available when Beatrice Companies, Inc., a Chicago-based food concern and owner of the second largest collection of Coca-Cola bottling operations, began looking to sell its stake in bottling Coca-Cola. Beatrice was in the process of being acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, a $6.2 billion leveraged buyout that forced Beatrice to divest a wealth of assets before mid-1987. Slated for divestiture was the company's most profitable major segment--Coca-Cola bottling facilities stretching across nine states, including one of the country's most lucrative regions, California.
Faced with either letting the two largest bottling operations in the country fall into potentially hostile hands or acquiring them, The Coca-Cola Company's management opted for the latter, quickly finding themselves in the midst of purchasing two companies with combined annual revenues of more than $2 billion. The potential consolidation of these two enormous bottling organizations was reflective of an industry-wide pattern that had developed during the previous ten years, as small independent bottlers merged and became large independent bottlers, winnowing the ranks of the bottling industry to more effectively compete in the new era of the "cola wars." In 1975, there were an estimated 2,400 soft drink bottling plants in the United States; ten years later, when JTL's and Beatrice's bottling groups were up for sale, the number of plants had dropped to 1,400 and by 1990 the number whittled to 730.
As The Coca-Cola Company's negotiations with JTL and Beatrice dragged on through the spring and into the summer, speculations abounded that The Coca-Cola Company would form a separate bottling entity with the two acquisitions and the bottling operations it already owned. Although purchasing JTL's and Beatrice's bottling operations would give the soft drink company more control over its bottlers than it had in the past, the addition of the two heavyweight bottlers would also give the soft drink company considerable debt. A solution to this problem would come later, but as the summer wore on, the agreement to acquire the largest of the two companies, JTL Corp., fell apart, making The Coca-Cola Company's worries about assuming debilitating debt appear moot.
Some members of the Lupton family had decided in late June against selling the source of their family's fortune, wishing instead to remain independent, as they had for nearly a century. At about the same time JTL withdrew from negotiations with The Coca-Cola Company, however, an agreement between The Coca-Cola Company and Beatrice was reached, stipulating that the soft drink company would purchase Beatrice's bottling group for $1 billion. Two weeks later, the directors of JTL made an about-face, deciding again to sell their bottling operations to the Coca-Cola Company for $1.4 billion.
The two transactions were completed in the fall, forming the foundation for a new prodigious force in the soft drink bottling industry, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., a company that would become known throughout the industry as CCE. The Coca-Cola Company borrowed $2.4 billion to buy JTL and Beatrice's bottling group, incurring enough debt to dilute its earnings. To avoid this drain on its finances, the soft drink company's management decided to sell 51 percent of CCE's ownership to the public, the largest initial stock offering in the history of the United States at that point. By doing so, the debt accumulated from its bottling acquisitions was wiped off The Coca-Cola Company's financial books, while the stock-buying public was relied upon to invest $1.5 billion to get CCE up and running.
Several days after filing the prospectus for its CCE public offering, The Coca-Cola Company signed an agreement to buy Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Southern Florida with the intention of turning around and selling the bottling group to CCE. This, the soft drink company did and would continue to do, building up its control over its domestic bottlers located in regions contiguous to the bottling operations it already owned through its 49 percent stake in CCE. Donald Keough, chief operating officer of The Coca-Cola Company and CCE's chairman, superintended over this expansion of CCE's operating territory, but the bottling company was essentially stewarded during its first years by Brian Dyson, who was described by the Wall Street Journal as a "professorial Argentine who runs marathons." Dyson was selected as CCE's chief executive officer after earning much praise as the president of Coca-Cola USA, the domestic soft drink arm of The Coca-Cola Company; in that capacity, Dyson had spearheaded the soft drink company's marketing forays into the sale of diet Coke and the company's reformulated "new" Coke.
In his new position, Dyson faced the formidable task of satisfying CCE's shareholders in a business essentially foreign to The Coca-Cola Company. In contrast to the company he left to lead CCE, Dyson found himself in the less profitable, more capital-intensive business of carbonating Coca-Cola concentrate, bottling it, and selling it to stores, where the contentious pricing battle between The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo reached its most palpable point. Ironically, in this battle, The Coca-Cola Company and CCE fought for divergent goals: The Coca-Cola Company was concerned primarily with the volume of concentrate it sold, which generally increased when the retail price of Coke dropped, while CCE was concerned primarily with keeping its production and distribution costs as far below the retail price of Coke as possible. Thrust into this new, somewhat alien segment of the soft drink industry, Dyson went about bottling and selling a very familiar product, increasing the scope of CCE operations throughout the late 1980s.
In July 1987, CCE acquired the group of bottling companies The Coca-Cola Company had acquired in the fall of 1986, paying its 49 percent owners $173 million for bottling properties in Florida, Alabama, and Texas. Six months later, in January 1988, CCE agreed to pay $500 million to acquire additional bottlers from The Coca-Cola Company, this time for operations serving Miami, Memphis, Delaware, and Maryland. This set of acquisitions gave The Coca-Cola Company control over 45 percent of its domestic volume.
Other minor acquisitions followed, including the absorption of West Georgia Coca-Cola Bottlers, Inc., Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of West Point-LaGrange, Palestine Coca-Cola Bottling Co., and Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Greenville, Inc., all purchased in 1989. As CCE entered the 1990s, it purchased another large bottler from The Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Arkansas, for an estimated $250 million, leading the way to an acquisition the following year that signalled significant changes at CCE. Available for acquisition was Johnston Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Chattanooga, of which The Coca-Cola Company already owned 20 percent. Johnston represented roughly 11 percent of national Coca-Cola volume, second in size only to CCE itself. Serving a population base of 27.5 million spread across 15 states, Johnston's operations would place 55 percent of total domestic Coca-Cola bottle-and-can volume under one operational and financial structure--the ever-widening corporate umbrella of CCE--but perhaps as equally beneficial for CCE was the managerial expertise the company would obtain through its purchase of Johnston. This infusion of new management was needed because CCE, in the four years since its formation, had demonstrated lackluster performance by executing its role as a Coca-Cola bottler in 26 states with disappointing results.
During CCE's first four years of existence, much of Coca-Cola's domestic volume growth was derived not from CCE's bottling operations but from The Coca-Cola Company's independent franchised bottlers. Much of the blame for CCE's woes, which in addition to flat sales included low employee morale, was placed on the shoulders of the company's chief executive, Dyson. Critics charged that Dyson lacked the "street smarts" and the proper personality to deal with retailers. Whatever the cause of CCE's ails, the effect was clear: CCE needed to substantially ameliorate its performance. Johnston's president and chief operating officer, Henry Schimberg, and its 45 percent owner, Summerfield K. Johnston were perceived as the managers to effect such a turnaround.
Summerfield Johnston, whose grandfather purchased the first Coca-cola bottling franchise in 1901, and Schimberg, who was slated to occupy the same positions at CCE as he did at Johnston, were respected as skilled bottling managers--something Dyson, despite his success at Coca-Cola USA, was not. Under Schimberg's stewardship, Johnston Bottling had recorded eight percent annual growth in sales volume--twice the industry rate--and nearly quintupled its operating profit during the same span that Dyson had overseen CCE's flat growth. Dyson, it readily became apparent, was on his way out, a prediction made by the business press when it was learned that Dyson was not even informed of the pending Johnston acquisition until a deal had already been struck.
In December 1991, CCE acquired Johnston and with it, the talents of Schimberg, who took over the day-to-day operations of CCE. In his new post, Schimberg successfully achieved a profitable balance between the opposing goals of price and volume. Between 1991 and 1993, operating profit rose from $538 million to $804 million, while bottle-and-can case growth jumped from 0 percent to four percent. More important to CCE's shareholders, who held a 51 percent stake in the company, CCE's stock price climbed from $12.25 to $19.00 by 1994, giving both CCE shareholders and CCE management hope that the company would continue to record encouraging growth in the future.
As CCE entered the mid-1990s, Schimberg's strategic maneuvers continued to work their magic. By reorganizing the company, Schimberg had laid a new foundation for its future, decentralizing CCE's management to drive decision-making down as close to the point of retail sale as possible. In this manner, with close attention paid to the point of sale, Schimberg hoped to create a legacy of success for The Coca-Cola Company's largest bottling group.
Principal Subsidiaries: BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles; Bottling Holdings (International) Inc.; CCT Acquisition Corporation, Inc.; The Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Memphis; Delaware Coca-Cola Bottling Company; Enterprises Consulting, Inc.; Florida Coca-Cola Bottling Company; Johnston Coca-Cola Bottling Group, Inc.; The Louisiana Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Ltd.; Valley Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Inc.; Vending Holding Company; The Wave Insurance Company.
Related information about Coca-Cola
|introduced=1886
|discontinued=
|colour = Caramel
|related= Pepsi-Cola,
RC Cola, Mecca Cola, OpenCola
|variants=Coca-Cola Classic
}}
Coca-Cola (often "Coke") is a carbonated cola and the world's most popular
soft drink. The Coca-Cola
Company's headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia,
where the drink was first concocted around 1886. Coke's inventor John Pemberton was not a
shrewd marketer of his drink, but the ownership of Coke eventually
passed to Asa
Candler, whose company remains the producer of Coke today.
Candler's successful marketing, continued by his successors such as
Robert
Woodruff, established Coke as a major soft drink first in the
United States and
later around the world.
Originally designed to be sold at soda fountains, Coca-Cola was later sold in
bottles, whose distinctive shape have become a part of the drink's
branding. Major advertising campaigns have established Coca-Cola slogans such
as "The pause that refreshes" and "Always the Real Thing" as part
of popular
culture. The formula for Coke, whose status as a trade secret has been
embellished by company lore, originally contained an uncertain
amount of cocaine,
though this was reduced over time (falling to 1/400th of a grain,
or 0.16 milligrams, per ounce of syrup by 1902)According to
Snopes, and eliminated
around 1906 as health regulations were tightened. Nevertheless,
Coca-Cola has been criticized for its possible negative health
effects, including many urban myths. This tension reached its peak during the
1980s, at the height of the Cola Wars, which eventually resulted in the heavily
publicised introduction of "New Coke." The widely unpopular decision was eventually
rescinded in the face of public opposition.
The Coca-Cola
Company has on occasion introduced soft drinks under the
Coca-Cola brand name. The most famous of these is Diet Coke, which has become a
major diet cola, but
others exist, such as Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke. There are also some drinks marketed by the
company but which remain unaffiliated with Coca-Cola the drink,
such as Sprite.
History
Early years
Columbus,
Georgia druggist John Stith Pemberton invented a cocawine called Pemberton's
French Wine Coca in 1885, although it was originally meant to
be a headache medicine. He was inspired by the formidable success
of French Angelo
Mariani's cocawine, Vin Mariani.
The same year, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed Prohibition legislation, Pemberton began to
develop a non-alcoholic version of the French Wine Coca. His book
keeper (and later lead Marketeer), Frank Robinson, coined the name Coca-Cola, because
it included the stimulant cocaine and was flavored using kola nuts, a source of caffeine. The first sales were made at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on
May 7, 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.
Pemberton claimed Coca-Cola cured myriad diseases, including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence.
In 1887, Pemberton sold a stake in his company to Asa Griggs Candler,
who incorporated it as the Coca Cola Corporation in 1888.Green Party USA
(2004). "A Green Party USA Perspective
on the Coca-Cola Boycott". Candler apparently purchased
exclusive rights to the formula from John Pemberton, Margaret Dozier, and
Woolfolk Walker.
45–47.
In 1892, Candler incorporated a second company, The Coca-Cola
Company — the efficiency of this concerted advertising campaign
would not be realized until much later.
Candler pioneered several
promotional techniques, such as the distribution of vouchers for free glasses of
Coca-Cola, and advertising through media varying from soda fountain
urns to wall murals (a
possible ancestor of the billboard).Jones, Eleanor & Ritzmann, Florian.
Retrieved June 17, 2006.
Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time on March 12, 1894. The first bottling of Coca-Cola occurred in
Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the Biedenharn Candy Company in 1891.
The distinctive "hobble-skirt" bottle design now associated with
Coca-Cola was introduced in 1915. "Collecting Coca-Cola
Bottles, Part 1: The First Coca-Cola Bottles". Retrieved May
16, 2006.
After the advent of bottling, the company began taking advertising
even more seriously than it had before, hiring William D'Arcy, whose
creations set the tone for Coca-Cola advertising that his
successors would follow. Instead of targeting particular population
segments, D'Arcy attempted to appeal to as broad a class of people
as possible, with advertising copy such as "All classes, ages and
sexes drink Coca-Cola".
After Candler, the next executive to have a major impact on Coke's
future was Robert
Woodruff, who focused on expanding the scope of the business to
the rest of the US. It was Woodruff who assumed responsibility for
designing Coca-Cola's foreign advertising campaigns, affixing the
company logo to racing
dog sleds in Canada
and Spanish bullfighting arenas. He also introduced some new forms
of distributing Coca-Cola, such as the six-pack carton, which made bulk purchases of
Coca-Cola substantially easier."Robert Woodruff".
Retrieved June 17, 2006.
In 1929, the onset of the Great Depression led to fears that sales might be
depressed for the year. a 1935 advertisement depicted a man
nonchalantly smiling on his way to work, presenting an idealised
view of American life at the time. The proliferation of Coca-Cola,
and a newcomer to the soft drink market, Pepsi, during this period led to a decline in the
sales of Moxie, which had
outsold Coca-Cola as recently as 1920, and continued to rival
Coca-Cola's dominance of the American market. by offering
twelve-ounce bottles for the same price (five cents) as Coca-Cola's
six-ounce bottles, as well as a musical jingle in its advertising campaign, PepsiCo
succeeded in becoming a challenger to Coca-Cola's dominance of the
American market, with its profits doubling from 1936 to 1938.
World War II to the 1970s
When the United States entered World War II, sugar rationing in the United States
meant Coca-Cola was unable to produce drinks at full capacity.
However, a deal was struck between the U.S. government and
Coca-Cola whereby the company was exempted from sugar rationing,
while Coca-Cola supplied free drinks to the United States Army.
The U.S. 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.
Eventually, 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 (Fanta) by a Coca-Cola employee. Fanta is still sold worldwide to this day.
Another wartime innovation was the trademarking of "Coke" by the Coca-Cola Company,
validating it as a way of referring to Coca-Cola. Initially having
been restricted only to North America and Western Europe, Coke was
soon being distributed in numerous other countries, especially
those, such as the Philippines, which had been occupied by the Americans
during World War II. The process was aided
by the company assuming control of a number of Coca-Cola
manufacturing plants which had been established during the war by
the army, with help from the company, in order to spur distribution
of the drink to soldiers.
1985 to the Present
In April 1985, The Coca-Cola Corporation launched a reformulated
Coca-Cola, dubbed New
Coke with an intense marketing effort.
Coca-Cola and Local Competitors
Pepsi is often second
to Coke in terms of sales, and outsells Coca-Cola in some
localities. Around the world, some local brands do compete with
Coke.
In Peru, Inca Kola
outsells Coca-Cola. AllBusiness.
In Sweden, Julmust outsells Coca-Cola
during the Christmas
season."About Kristall Beverage".
Retrieved June 14, 2006.
In Scotland, the
locally produced Irn-Bru
was more popular until 2005 when Coca-Cola and Diet Coke began to
outpace its sales.Murden, Terry (Jan. 30, 2005). Scotland on
Sunday.
In India, Coca-Cola ranks third behind the leader, Pepsi-Cola, and
local drink Thums Up.
Clifford (February 10, 2003) "Finally, Coke Gets It
Right in India". Retrieved August 9, 2006.
In the Middle East, Mecca
Cola is seen as a competitor to Coca-Cola.
In Turkey, Cola Turka is
a major competitor to Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola and Islam
Due to its symbolic association with the United States,
Coca-Cola has been a target of anti-Americanism in the Middle East. One such
instance in 2000 saw a claim that the Coca-Cola label contained
hidden anti-Islamic phrases in Arabic. The Coca-Cola Company claimed sales
dropped 10 to 15% in Egypt
after the rumour began spreading in 2000. The controversy became so
widespread that the Grand Mufti of Egypt - who has proudly admitted in related interviews
that he himself indulges in at least one Coke daily - publicly
addressed it, declaring that the logo "does not injure Islam or
Muslims".Mikkelson, Barbara (2001). Retrieved May 16, 2006.
Mecca Cola was
launched in France in 2002 and has since proliferated in Europe and
the Middle East. BBC.
Production
Coca-Cola formula
As a publicity
marketing
strategy started by Ernest Woodruff, the company presents the formula of
Coca-Cola as one of the most closely held trade secrets in modern
business to which only a few employees have access.Mikkelson,
Barbara (1999). However, experienced perfumers and food scientists — 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."The Coca-Cola Recipe".
Coco (fluid extract of coca), citric
acid, lime
juice, sugar, water, and caramel sufficient, and "X":
oils of orange,
lemon, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, and neroli.
Franchised production model
The actual production and distribution of Coca-Cola follows a
franchising model. 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, Coca-Cola Amatil,
Coca-Cola
Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC) and Coca-Cola FEMSA, but
fully independent bottlers produce almost half of the volume sold
in the world.
As the bottler adds sugar and sweeteners, the sweetness of the
drink is said to differ in various parts of the world, in order to
cater for local taste.
Bottle and logo design
The famous Coca-Cola logotype is said to have largely been created by John
Pemberton's business partner, Frank Mason
Robinson, in 1885. 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, but known to some as the "hobble skirt" bottle, was
created in 1915 by a Swedish former glassblower, Alexander Samuelson, 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 the Coca-Cola Company, Samuelson took time
to ponder a possible new design for the bottle after production at
his plant was shut down due to a heat wave. Inspired, he considered the possibility of
basing a new design on the kola nut or coca leaf, two of the drink's flagship ingredients. a
crucial ingredient in chocolate, but not Coca-Cola. One alternative depiction
has Raymond Loewy
as the inventor of the unique design, but although Loewy did serve
as a designer of Coke cans and bottles in later years, he was in
the French Army in the year the bottle was invented and did not
migrate to the United States until 1919. Others have attributed
inspiration for the design not to the cacao pod, but to a Victorian hooped dress.
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; Mikkelson, "
The Claus That Refreshes,"
snopes.com, February 27, 2001 (accessed June 10, 2005). 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, and is widely considered one of the best
advertising campaigns in history. 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",
"Things Go Better", "(It's) The Real Thing", "Coke is it" and
"Always Coca-Cola" (see Coca-Cola slogans).
As a result of extensive campaigns in the early 20th century, the
Coca-Cola drink has a high degree of identification with the United
States itself, being considered an "American brand" or to a small
extent as representing America (compare Mickey Mouse). "The Coca-Cola Company Under the
Nazis". Retrieved May 16, 2006.
Starting in 1975, Pepsi-Cola ran a series of television advertisements
showing people participating in taste tests in which they expressed
a preference for Pepsi over Coke. one of Coke's ads compared the
so-called Pepsi
challenge to two chimpanzees deciding which tennis ball was furrier.
Coca-Cola has a long history of sports marketing relationships,
which over the years have included several major sports leagues
both in the United States and internationally. Two such notable
instances are Coca-Cola's sponsorship of the Olympic games, with Coke
being the first-ever sponsor of an Olympic game at the 1928 Summer
Olympics in Amsterdam, and also Coca-Cola's sponsorship of FIFA since 1978 in the 1978 FIFA World Cup,
which organises football tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup. The
English Football (Soccer) division 1, (the second division behind
the Barclays-sponsored - FA Premier League) has now been re-named the 'Coca-Cola
Championship'. Coca-Cola owns a Japanese rugby union club, the
Coca Cola
West Red Sparks, who are based in Fukuoka city, Kyushu, and compete in the Top League. A number of NASCAR's most popular drivers such as Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart, Jeff Burton, Mark Martin and
Greg Biffle are part
of the Coca-Cola Racing Family. Drinkers use codes found on
bottles and 6/12 packs (which earn three times the points that
bottles do) and redeem them on the mycokerewards website.
Urban legends and unusual uses
The numerous urban legends about Coca-Cola have led the Urban Legends
Reference Pages to devote a whole section of their site to
"Cokelore". Coca-Cola has in particular been the target of urban legends decrying the
drink for its supposedly copious amounts of acid (its pH
value of 2.5 is midway between vinegar and gastric acid), or the "life-threatening" effects of its
carbonated
water. for example, "highway troopers use Coke to clean blood from highways
after accidents," "somebody once died in a Coke-drinking
competition," or "Coke can dissolve a tooth overnight." Coca-Cola
was also once believed to have been a possible form of birth control due to this
allegedly high acidity level being supposedly able to kill sperm.
www.snopes.com/cokelore/sperm.asp
One unusual use for Coke is as a rust-control substance?the
phosphoric acid
in Coke converts iron
oxide to iron phosphate, and as such can be used as an initial
treatment for corroded iron and steel objects being renovated, etc.
The acid can be used to anodize titanium according to various websites.Seeley, Bill. The
MythBusters tested this and found that Coke seemed to be no more
effective than any other liquid.
According to popular belief, the coca leaf extract cocaine was once added to
Coca-Cola, per se. The United States DEA
oversees the importation of coca for Coca-Cola, and later sale of
the extracted cocaine to the drug
industry.Miller, M. "Quality Stuff: Firm is Peddling Cocaine,
and Deals are legit" Wall Street Journal 27 October 1994.
Pit crews in NASCAR sometimes pour coke on
their pit stalls to create traction for the race car when
exiting/entering the pit. refer to third paragraph of this section
for detailed discussion and citations instead of digging for
anything that looks remotely controversial and tagging
it-->
Most nutritionists
advise that Coca-Cola and other soft drinks can be harmful if
consumed excessively, particularly to young children whose soft
drink consumption competes with, rather than complements, a
balanced diet. Studies have shown that regular soft drink users
have a lower intake of calcium (which can contribute to osteoporosis), magnesium, ascorbic acid, riboflavin, and vitamin A.Jacobson, Michael F.
Retrieved June 10, 2005.
Like most other colas, Coca-Cola contains phosphoric acid. Retrieved May 16, 2006.
There is also some concern regarding the usage of high fructose corn
syrup in the production of Coca-Cola.
FoodNavigator.com.
In India, there exists a major controversy concerning pesticides and other harmful
chemicals in bottled products including Coca-Cola. In 2003, the
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a , sale
and production of Coca-Cola, along with other soft drinks, has been
banned.Kerala bans Coke and
Pepsi Five other Indian states have announced partial bans on
the drinks in schools, colleges and hospitals.Indian state bans Pepsi and Coke On
Friday, September 22, 2006, the High Court in Kerala overturned the
Kerala ban ruling that only the federal government can ban food
products.Thomas, V.M. Indian Court Overturns
Coke, Pepsi Ban.
Notes and references
Additional topics
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