Keep pulling the thread on The Coca-Cola Company.
Frank Robinson, John Pemberton's business partner, created the name "Coca-Cola" and designed the iconic Spencerian script logo in 1887.
In a 1920 Supreme Court case, it was ruled that "Coca-Cola" is a protected brand name and not a descriptive term, a landmark decision for trademark law.
The iconic Coca-Cola Contour Bottle was granted trademark status in 1951 after a study showed that over 99% of Americans could identify it by shape alone.
Robert Woodruff became president of The Coca-Cola Company in 1923 and either ran or controlled the company for over 60 years until his death in 1985.
In 1931, Coca-Cola's advertising campaign featuring illustrations by Haddon Sundblom standardized the modern image of Santa Claus as a large, jolly figure in a red suit.
During the Great Depression in 1934, Pepsi gained significant market share by selling 12-ounce bottles for five cents, offering twice the volume of Coca-Cola's 6.5-ounce bottle for the same price.
During World War II, The Coca-Cola Company built 64 portable bottling plants across Asia, Europe, and North Africa to supply U.S. troops, distributing over 5 billion bottles.
A blind taste test conducted for Coca-Cola in the late 1950s revealed that a statistically significant number of consumers preferred the taste of Pepsi, a finding that was suppressed by CEO Robert Woodruff.
Coca-Cola's exclusive partnership with McDonald's, which began with a handshake deal in 1955, involves preferential treatment such as shipping syrup in stainless steel tanks and allowing a custom syrup-to-water ratio.
Coca-Cola turned down the opportunity to acquire Frito-Lay, which was subsequently bought by Pepsi in 1965.
The "Pepsi Challenge" campaign, which began in 1975 under marketing executive John Sculley, was a grassroots effort using locally filmed blind taste tests to demonstrate consumer preference for Pepsi.
By 1977, the success of the Pepsi Challenge led Pepsi to surpass Coca-Cola in market share for the bottled soft drink market in the U.S.