ECONOMY STUDIOCoca-Cola was born in Atlanta on May 8, 1886. Dr. John Pemberton carried a jug of the syrup to Jacobs’ Pharmacy, where it sold for five cents a glass, and during the first year sales averaged nine drinks per day1.
Today the company’s licensed beverages account for 2.2 billion of the estimated 65 billion servings of all beverages consumed worldwide every day2. How did nine drinks a day become that? The answer is a business model more than a recipe.
From a jug to a corporation
Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, suggested the name and penned the trademark in his own script. Pemberton gradually sold portions of the business, and just before his death in 1888 he sold his remaining interest to Asa G. Candler1.
Sole ownership, not achieved until 1891, cost Candler a total of $2,3003. He formed a Georgia corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, with an initial capitalization of $100,000, and registered the trademark on January 31, 18933. By 1892, syrup sales had grown nearly tenfold, helped by thousands of coupons for a free glass, and by 1895 the company could say Coca-Cola was being drunk in every state and territory in the United States3.
The deal sold for a dollar
In the summer of 1899, two Chattanooga lawyers, Benjamin F. Thomas and Joseph B. Whitehead, traveled to Atlanta to meet Candler. He sold them the bottling rights for $1.00 and never bothered to collect the dollar4. They opened the world’s first Coca-Cola bottling company4.
The 1899 deal let the lawyers buy syrup at a fixed price with no end date5. The company would make the syrup; others would raise the money, build the plants and run the trucks. In 20 years, the number of bottling plants grew from two to more than 1,000, 95 percent of them locally owned and operated3.
That is still how it works. Coca-Cola’s annual report says its bottlers are independent contractors, not its agents, and that most of its branded beverages are prepared, packaged, distributed and sold by independent bottling partners2. In 2025, concentrate operations were 85 percent of worldwide unit case volume and finished product operations 15 percent2.
A nickel for 73 years
The price of a 6.5-ounce Coca-Cola was 5 cents from 1886 until 1959, through two world wars and the Great Depression6. That is 73 years at the same nickel price7. Economists Daniel Levy and Andrew Young attribute it to the contract between the company and its bottlers, single-coin vending machines, and single-coin transactions6.
A fixed syrup price meant a higher bottle price earned Coca-Cola nothing extra, so the company wanted a low retail price and high volume, and painted “Drink Coca-Cola, 5 Cents” on buildings5. Its vending machines took only one coin, the nickel; the company even asked the U.S. Treasury for a 7.5-cent coin and asked President Eisenhower for help, without result5. Some stores charged 6 cents in the late 1940s, and the last nickel Coke appears to have been sold in 19595.
For scale, a nickel in January 1913 has the same buying power as $1.71 in August 20268.
The fixed price did not last in peace. After the First World War, swings in the price of cane sugar set off a dispute, the bottlers sued in 1920, and two 1921 consent decrees modified the 1899 franchise9. The 1921 compromise allowed syrup price increases tied to the price of sugar9.
The bottle and the sale
In 1915, the company asked glass makers for a bottle so distinct that you would recognize it by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground10. The Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, found an illustration of a cocoa bean with an elongated shape and distinct ribs; its patent was granted on November 16, 1915, and the bottle went into production in early 191610. By 1920 most bottlers used it10.
In 1919, the Candler interests sold the firm for $25 million to a consortium headed by Ernest Woodruff, and Robert Woodruff became president in 192311. That is roughly 10,000 times what Candler had paid for sole ownership12.
The company went public in 1919 at $40 a share13. Through 11 splits from 1927 to 2012, one original share became 9,216 shares13. At a share price of $93.90 on October 16, 2026, that is about $865,000 of stock from one $40 share, before any dividends14,15. The company’s market value was about $404 billion that day, according to a secondary source15. The company is worth more than 16,000 times what the 1919 buyers paid, not adjusted for inflation16.
War and the world
In 1941, Robert Woodruff ordered that every man in uniform should get a bottle of Coca-Cola for 5 cents, wherever he was and whatever it cost the company17. A cablegram from North Africa dated June 29, 1943 asked for materials and equipment for 10 bottling plants and 3 million filled bottles17. In all, 64 bottling plants were shipped abroad during World War II, and more than 5 billion bottles were consumed by military service personnel17. From the mid-1940s until 1960, the number of countries with bottling operations nearly doubled17.
New Coke
In 1982, Diet Coke was announced as the most significant new product introduction in the company’s 96-year history18. By the end of 1983 it was the No. 1 diet soft drink in the U.S.18.
Then came the famous mistake. On April 23, 1985, the company announced a taste change, after the new formula was preferred in taste tests of nearly 200,000 consumers19. The consumer hotline took 1,500 calls a day by June, compared with 400 a day before the change19. The original formula returned on July 11, 1985, after 79 days, and the company received 31,600 calls in two days after the Coca-Cola Classic announcement19.
Buying back the bottlers
For a century, the independent bottlers were the model. Then, in 2010, the company agreed to acquire Coca-Cola Enterprises’ entire North American business in a transaction valued at about $12.3 billion, including $8.88 billion of assumed debt; it closed on October 3, 201020. Then it sold the territories on again: by May 2017, territories under agreement covered about 90 percent of Coca-Cola Refreshments’ North American volume, and the company said it was on track to complete refranchising by the end of 201721.
It kept buying other things. It agreed to acquire Costa for $5.1 billion in 2018, completing the deal in January 2019 at $4.9 billion22. In November 2021 it acquired the remaining 85 percent of BodyArmor for about $5.6 billion in cash23. The company also made a $6.1 billion contingent payment for fairlife in 202524.
In July 2025, Coca-Cola confirmed it would add a cane-sugar version of its trademark cola to its U.S. lineup that fall, an addition it said was designed to complement its core portfolio25.
What the model looks like in numbers
In 2025, Coca-Cola’s net operating revenues were $47,941 million, with a gross profit margin of 61.6 percent2. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $14,521 million, other operating charges $1,261 million and operating income $13,762 million2.
Per $100 of revenue, that is $38.40 for making the product, $30.30 for selling and running the company, $2.60 for other charges and $28.70 of operating profit26.
Net revenues grew 2 percent to $47.9 billion, and operating margin was 28.7 percent against 21.2 percent a year earlier; earnings per share grew 23 percent to $3.0424. In the second quarter of 2026, net revenues grew 7 percent to $13.4 billion, with unit case volume up 5 percent, concentrate sales up 4 percent and price and mix up 2 percent; operating margin was 34.9 percent27.
The system sold 33.8 billion unit cases in 2025, 84 percent of them outside the United States, and the five largest bottling partners together were 44 percent of worldwide unit case volume2.
The company reports 200 or more bottling partners and over 950 production facilities28. It had about 65,900 employees at December 31, 2025, while together with its bottling partners it employs more than 700,000 people2,27. That means fewer than 1 in 10 of the people who make and move Coca-Cola are on the company’s own payroll29.
On February 19, 2026, the board approved the 64th consecutive annual dividend increase, raising the quarterly dividend from 51 cents to 53 cents30. The company will release third-quarter results on October 27, 202631.
What the story shows
Coca-Cola’s most valuable decisions were about what not to own. It sold the right to bottle for a dollar, fixed the syrup price for decades, and let others carry the plants and the trucks. When it took the bottling business back in 2010 it paid billions, then sold it on again20,21.
The nickel is the clearest sign of what it was selling. For 73 years the drink stayed at five cents while the company’s real product, the syrup and the brand, moved through a network of other people’s factories6,7,2.
