When John Stith Pemberton, a Georgian pharmacist invented Coca-Cola in 1886, he couldn’t have imagined that it would become on of the world’s most popular drink companies. Of the nearly 7 billion people in the word, the distinctive red and white Coca-Cola logo is recognized by 94% of the world’s population.
Although PepsiCo generated more total revenue than Coca-Cola last year because of the different food brands they own such as Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats, they did not come close to Coca-Cola in terms of drink revenue. Coca-Cola generated around $28 billion in soft drink revenue compared to $12 billion for PepsiCo. Coca-Cola maintains 42.8% of the soft drink market share.
There are many interesting facts about cola that you might not know. Listed below are 10 Coca-Cola facts that may give you a whole new perspective about this global company.
10 Facts about Coca-Cola
- When Coca-Cola started to bottle their product, they realized that they needed a way to make it stand out from all the other “cola” products that were flooding the market. Earl Dean from Root Glass Company of Terra Haute, designed a bottle for Coca-Cola that was based on the shape of a cacao seed pod. Thanks to its unique shape, customers could distinguish the Coke bottle from any other bottle by touch alone.
- Coca-Cola is the second most widely understood term in the world, after “OK.”
- There are nearly 10,450 soft drinks from Coca-Cola consumed every second of every day including Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite.
- If all the Coca-Cola bottles in the world were laid end to end, they would reach the moon and back more than 1,677 times.
- In 1985, Coca-Cola became the first soft drink ever in space.
- The forumla for Coca-Cola is so top secret, that only a few people know what is in it. The concentrate is made centrally, then exported to more than 900 bottling plants around the world.
- Diet Coke was introduced in 1982 and is now the world’s top diet drink.
- On average, Mexicans drink 665 servings of Coke products each year, more than the average American, British, Indian and Chinese combined.
- According to the CIA World Factbook, Coca-Cola with its $35.1 billion in revenue would make it the 84th largest economy in the world, just ahead of Costa Rica.
- The Coca-Cola brand is worth an estimated $74 billion: more than Budweiser, Pepsi, Starbucks and Red Bull combined.
