Coca Cola Company an Overview

The Value Chain

The priority issue which Coca Cola maps in the value chain are:Active Healthy Living
Human Rights
Packaging
Product and Ingredient Safety
Water Stewardship

Strategic Goals

Current Strategic Actions

The seven sustenance strategyBusiness and Customer

1. It started with a unique, market-tested formula.
After serving as a Confederate colonel in the Civil War, John Pemberton wanted to
develop a version of the coca wines (basically cola with alcohol and cocaine) that
were in vogue at the time. In 1886, Atlanta passed prohibition laws that forced
beverage manufacturers to produce non-alcoholic versions of their drinks.
Pemberton sent his nephew Lewis Newman with samples of his formulas to a local
pharmacy where people congregated to drink these early versions of sodas.
Newman relayed feedback to his uncle about the various concoctions, and by the
end of the year Pemberton had a recipe that was unique and tailored to customers'
tastes. The original recipe is still locked in a vault in Atlanta.

Cocaine was removed from Coke in 1903. Other minor adjustments have been made
in the past century or so, but beyond the "New Coke" disaster of 1985, the recipe
has largely remained unchanged. This decision helped the company scale, Butler
writes, since it did not spend time trying to tailor the taste to regional markets
throughout the world.

2. Its logo uses a timeless font.

Pemberton's bookkeeper, Frank Mason Robinson, decided that Coca-Cola's logo
should be written in the Spencerian script accountants used because it would
differentiate it from its competitors. The company standardized the logo in 1923
and, like the recipe, decided that while packaging could adjust to the times, the core
logo was to be untouched.
It's resulted in a logo that has had more than 100 years to become imprinted in the
minds of people around the world.

3. It was distributed in a proprietary bottle.

After the Georgia businessman Asa Griggs Candler became the majority shareholder
of Coca-Cola in 1888, he set his sights on making Coke the nation's most popular
cola through marketing and partnerships with regional bottlers.
By 1915, Candler was losing market share to hundreds of competitors. He launched
a national contest for a new bottle design that would signal to consumers that Coke
was a premium product that couldn't be confused with some other brown cola in an
identical clear glass bottle.
The new bottle had to be able to be mass produced using existing equipment yet
also be distinct.
The Root Glass Company in Indiana decided to enter the contest and base its design
off the product's name. While combing through the dictionary for the word "coca"
and words like it, Butler writes, mold shop supervisor Earl R. Dean came across an
illustration for the cocoa plant that caught his attention. Coca-Cola had nothing to
do with cocoa, but the cocoa pod had a strange but appealing shape. He and his
team got to work and were declared the contest winners the next year.
Coca-Cola commissioned the bottle design as a piece of defensive marketing, but
began promoting the shape as much as the logo and product. Even after plastic
replaced glass as the standard means of drinking Coke in countries like the US, the
company continued to promote the image of the Coke bottle as an icon
4. It held retailers responsible for maintaining its high standard.
Ernest Woodruff's Trust Company of Georgia bought Coca-Cola from Candler in
1919. Woodruff was focused on maintaining a standard of excellence as the
company scaled.

The Coke team decided that its drink should be served at 36 degrees Fahrenheit,
and would send salesmen to new retailers to tell them the product should never be
served above 40 degrees.
The tactic may seem a bit silly today, but the 36-degree standard was just another
example of establishing Coca-Cola as a premium product that was worthy of more
attention than any of its competitors.
5. It kept its consumer price fixed for 70 years.
It's common today for tech startups to begin by offering a service for free and then
charging a higher price to consumers and/or advertisers once they've become
hooked. Before utilizing networking effects became a standard practice, Coca-Cola
used a similar approach to scale across the US and then throughout the world.
From 1886 to 1959, a bottle of Coke cost just five cents.

6. It guided word-of-mouth advertising and developed a voice.

It became apparent after Candler took over early in the company's life that Coke
was as much a drink as it was a consumable brand, an idea consumers could feel
good about identifying with.
Candler started a mass coupon initiative that resulted in 10% of all products from
1887 to 1920 to be given away in order to build brand awareness. He also provided
retailers with Coca-Cola swag like posters and festoons for decorations and
calendars and clocks for customers. According to Butler, Coke was a pioneer in
affixing a brand to items unrelated to the product.
And finally, all national, and then global, advertising contained variations of "Drink
Coca-Cola/Delicious and refreshing" and fit into a standardized design style.