INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDY

NAME- INDRANIL PANJA

CLASS- MBA
SEC-B
SUBJECT-CORPORATE STRATEGY
SUBJECT CODE- MB302
ROLL NO-33300921068
On May 8, 1886, Dr. John Pemberton served the
world’s first Coca-Cola at Jacobs' Pharmacy in Atlanta,
Ga. From that one iconic drink, we’ve evolved into a
total beverage company.

More than 1.9 billion servings of our drinks are enjoyed

in more than 200 countries each day. And it’s the
700,000 individuals employed by The Coca-Cola
Company and 225+ bottling partners that help to
deliver refreshment across the globe.

1. It started with a unique, market-tested formula.

After serving as a Confederate colonel in the Civil War,
John Pemberton wanted to develop a version of the
coca wines (basically cola with alcohol and cocaine)
that were in vogue at the time. In 1886, Atlanta passed
prohibition laws that forced beverage manufacturers
to produce non-alcoholic versions of their drinks.
Pemberton sent his nephew Lewis Newman with
samples of his formulas to a local pharmacy where
people congregated to drink these early versions of
sodas. Newman relayed feedback to his uncle about
the various concoctions, and by the end of the year
Pemberton had a recipe that was unique and tailored
to customers' tastes. The original recipe is still locked in
a vault in Atlanta.

Cocaine was removed from Coke in 1903. Other minor

adjustments have been made in the past century or so,
but beyond the "New Coke" disaster of 1985, the
recipe has largely remained unchanged. This decision
helped the company scale, Butler writes, since it did
not spend time trying to tailor the taste to regional
markets throughout the world.

2. Its logo uses a timeless font.

Pemberton's bookkeeper, Frank Mason Robinson,
decided that Coca-Cola's logo should be written in the
Spencerian script accountants used because it would
differentiate it from its competitors. The company
standardized the logo in 1923 and, like the recipe,
decided that while packaging could adjust to the times,
the core logo was to be untouched.

It's resulted in a logo that has had more than 100 years
to become imprinted in the minds of people around
the world.
3. It was distributed in a proprietary bottle.
After the Georgia businessman Asa Griggs Candler
became the majority shareholder of Coca-Cola in 1888,
he set his sights on making Coke the nation's most
popular cola through marketing and partnerships with
regional bottlers.

By 1915, Candler was losing market share to hundreds

of competitors. He launched a national contest for a
new bottle design that would signal to consumers that
Coke was a premium product that couldn't be confused
with some other brown cola in an identical clear glass
bottle.

The new bottle had to be able to be mass produced

using existing equipment yet also be distinct.

The Root Glass Company in Indiana decided to enter

the contest and base its design off the product's name.
While combing through the dictionary for the word
"coca" and words like it, Butler writes, mold shop
supervisor Earl R. Dean came across an illustration for
the cocoa plant that caught his attention. Coca-Cola
had nothing to do with cocoa, but the cocoa pod had a
strange but appealing shape. He and his team got to
work and were declared the contest winners the next
year.

Coca-Cola commissioned the bottle design as a piece of

defensive marketing, but began promoting the shape
as much as the logo and product. Even after plastic
replaced glass as the standard means of drinking Coke
in countries like the US, the company continued to
promote the image of the Coke bottle as an icon.