Coca-Cola Co.

Coca-Cola and its flagship product are famous, and freely available, in almost every country on earth. With around 1.9 billion servings sold every day, Coca-Cola is a giant in the drinks sector with 2,800 different products for sale in more than 200 countries.

Founded in Atlanta in 1886 by pharmacist and former colonel Dr. John Stith Pemberton, Coca-Cola’s sold just nine units per day in its first year. Originally marketed as a ‘temperance drink’, the drink soon found widespread popularity amidst a general distrust of traditional alcoholic beverages. It was Coca-Cola’s next owner, Asa Candler, who oversaw the company’s rapid expansion across the US. The billionth gallon (3.79 billionth liter) of Coca-Cola was produced in 1944, and worldwide success followed in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, Coca-Cola has grown organically and by acquisition, from the private juice manufacturer Minute Maid in 1960 to British coffee shop chain Costa in 2018. Along the way, it has picked up an enormous food and drink portfolio responsible for over $30 billion in annual revenue.

Despite the huge success of Coca-Cola and its top-secret formula, in 1985 the Coca-Cola company, after focus group research and ‘sip tests’, modified their recipe to create ‘New Coke’. Allegedly better tasting than both the original formula and critically their main rival Pepsi Cola, New Coke was a disaster. Within weeks the company was inundated with tens of thousands of angry phone calls and letters demanding they return to the original recipe. After less than 80 days with the new recipe, the board gave in and switched back to the original mixture. Courtesy of this massive publicity, Coca-Cola saw sales shoot up after this period.

Coca-Cola maintains an operating presence in many countries, with particularly large bottling subsidiaries based in Greece, Britain, and Mexico. Coca-Cola bottles some products in-house, but mostly provides concentrated syrups of its products to bottling subsidiaries that dilute them, place them in bottles, and send them to distributors. Other brands owned by the Coca-Cola company include Appletiser, Fanta, and Schweppes.

Coca-Cola listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1919 at $40 per share. Thanks to 19 stock splits, one share bought in 1919 would currently account for 9,216 shares, and the stock is a constituent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P500. Coca-Cola stock is famous for paying one of the highest and most consistent dividends among American companies, which at times has been challenged by analysts as being too expensive for the company to afford. In 2020, Coca-Cola paid out nearly 98% of total profits as dividends. Coca-Cola’s largest single investor is Warren Buffet’s investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway, which began buying stock in 1988 and owns just under 10% of the company. Other major shareholders include Vanguard and BlackRock.