The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. It produces Coca-Cola. The drink industry company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, and alcoholic beverages. The company's stock is listed on the NYSE and is part of the DJIA and the S&P 500 and S&P 100 indexes.
Company type
January 29, 1892, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Worldwide
- James Quincey (chairman & CEO)
- John Murphy (president & CFO)
US$45.8 billion (2023)
US$11.3 billion (2023)
US$10.7 billion (2023)
US$97.7 billion (2023)
US$27.5 billion (2023)
- Berkshire Hathaway (9.25%)
79,100 (2023)
The soft drink was developed in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton. At the time it was introduced, the product contained cocaine from coca leaves and caffeine from kola nuts which together acted as a stimulant. The coca and the kola are the source of the product name, and led to Coca-Cola's promotion as a "healthy tonic". Pemberton had been severely wounded in the American Civil War, and had become addicted to the pain medication morphine. He developed the beverage as a patent medicine in an effort to control his addiction.
In 1889, the formula and brand were sold for $2,300 (roughly $71,000 in 2022) to Asa Griggs Candler, who incorporated the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1892. The company has operated a franchised distribution system since 1889.[3] The company largely produces syrup concentrate, which is then sold to various bottlers throughout the world who hold exclusive territories. The company owns its anchor bottler in North America, Coca-Cola Refreshments.[4]
In general, the Coca-Cola Company and its subsidiaries only produce syrup concentrate, as well as sourcing beverage base including coffee beans, tea leaf, juices, etc., which is then sold to various bottlers throughout the world who hold a local Coca-Cola franchise.[74] Coca-Cola bottlers, who hold territorially exclusive contracts with the company, produce the finished product in packages from the concentrate and beverage base, in combination with filtered water and sweeteners. The bottlers then sell, distribute, and merchandise the Coca-Cola product to retail stores, vending machines, restaurants, and food service distributors.[74] Outside the United States, these bottlers also control the fountain business.
Since the 1980s, the company has actively encouraged the consolidation of bottlers, with the company often owning a share of these "anchor bottlers."[75]
In January 2006, the company formed the Bottling Investments Group (BIG), by bringing company-owned bottling operations together to strategically invest in select bottling operations, temporarily taking them under Coca-Cola ownership, and utilizing the leadership and resources of the company. Also, the company has accelerated refranchising both company-owned bottlers and independent bottling partners to consolidate their operations and move away from the capital-intensive and low-margin business of bottling, with maintaining minor share ownership of these consolidated bottlers and secure the right to nominate directors and/or executives through shareholders agreement and/or capital and business alliance agreement.[76][77]
As a result of the refranchising and bottler consolidations, multi-national/large-scale bottlers and three U.S.-based bottlers now dominate the manufacturing and distribution of the company's products except the territories managed by BIG bottlers.
Multi-national/large-scale bottlers
Bottlers headquartered and operated in the U.S.
Company-owned bottling operation is now managed under BIG, which covers operations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Philippines, Singapore, and Sri Lanka as well as eastern African operation by Coca-Cola Beverages Africa in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. In 2021, the company announced its intention to list Coca-Cola Beverages Africa as a publicly traded company. However, in June 2022 it announced that it was delaying this plan, pending an evaluation of macroeconomic conditions.[79]
Front groups[edit]
As part of its corporate propaganda campaign to deflect public attention away from the harmful health effects of its sugary drinks, the Coca-Cola Company has funded front organizations.
The Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness was led by Rhona S. Applebaum, who was also the Coca-Cola Company's Chief Science and Health Officer. It was announced in 2005, when Coca-Cola executive Donald Short, then the company's vice president, published a paper about his company's commitments to consumers' health in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.[140] Their paid advisers include Baylor College of Medicine researcher John Foreyt.[141] The Institute "sponsors continuing professional education for registered dietitians, nurses and other professionals."[142] This has led critics to say that "corporate influence is both tainting the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’s reputation and affecting its positions."[143]
The company funded creation of the front organization the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN) to address the growing evidence that the company's products are a leading cause of the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States and the growing number of Americans, including children, with type 2 diabetes. GEBN designed its own studies to arrive at conclusions set in advance and cherry picked data to support its corporate public relations agenda. After an August 2015 investigative report exposed the GEBN as a Coca-Cola Company front organization, GEBN was shut down.[144]
Three years after the shutdown of GEBN, the company, together with several other junk food giants, was revealed to be behind an initiative in China called "Happy 10 Minutes," funded through a group called the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). The aim of the initiative was to address decades of research on diet-related diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, by promoting physical exercise to the population but avoiding discussion of the link between such diseases and junk foods, including sugary drinks.[144][145] ILSI through the 1980s and 1990s had been promoting the tobacco industry's agenda in Europe and the United States.[146]
