Coca-Cola CEO on the Modern Multinational

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Updated: November 19th, 2023

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The Coca-Cola Company is a global beverage firm founded in the United States in 1892 by Asa Griggs Candler. Various carbonated drinks and non-alcoholic beverage concentrates & syrups are manufactured, sold, and marketed by this world-renowned soft drink brand.

John Stith Pemberton, a pharmacist, invented the soft drink formulation in 1886. At the time of its origination, the product comprised cocaine derived from coca leaves and caffeine derived from kola nuts, both of which served as stimulants.

The recipe and brand were sold for $2,300 (about $71,000 in 2022) to Asa Griggs Candler in 1889, who founded the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1892. Since 1889, the corporation has been running a franchised distribution system, leading to world domination in the cold beverage market.

The company's success grew to the extent that it bought Columbia Pictures for $692 million in 1982, which it later sold to Sony for $3 billion. In 1993, the business purchased the Indian cola brand Thums Up. It also acquired Costa Coffee from Whitbread for £3.9 billion on August 31, 2018.

According to the Coca-Cola Company's 2005 annual report, the company sold beverages in over 200 countries that year. According to the 2005 data, nearly 50 billion beverage servings were consumed globally.

Coca-Cola was declared in 2010 as the first brand to surpass £1 billion in annual UK supermarket sales. The company's overall sales were estimated to reach $33 billion globally in 2020.

In recent years, the company has spent approximately $4 billion per year globally to promote its drinks to the general public and spent approximately $4.24 billion on advertising in the fiscal year 2019, the share of which was paid to advertise Coca-Cola.