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Coca-Cola at 140: The Brand Built to Outlast Generations, Flops and All — Part 1
Many companies chase growth; fewer maintain relevance across generations. Time and again, businesses reinvent themselves in pursuit of growth. They enter new markets, chase emerging technologies and spend billions trying to stay ahead of competitors.
Coca-Cola, birthed in 1886, presents a different business question: what enables a brand to remain culturally recognisable and commercially relevant across generations of changing tastes, technologies and consumer expectations? Its 140-year history offers a compelling starting point for examining the principles that help businesses endure long after the conditions that created them have changed.
In its FY2022 annual report to US regulators, Coca-Cola stated that its trademarked beverages have been sold in the United States since 1886 and are now sold in more than 200 countries and territories.
The same filing reported that its beverages account for 2.2 billion of an estimated 64 billion servings consumed worldwide each day.
Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2025 placed Coca-Cola seventh, valued at $60.1 billion, a fall of 1.9 percent on the year before.
PhoneArena, reporting on Interbrand’s 2013 list, noted that Coca-Cola had topped the ranking for 13 consecutive…
