A short history of the Coca Cola Company

1. A short history of the Coca Cola company

In the year 1886, the Coca Cola Company is founded. Pharmacist John Smith Pemberton from Atlanta, Georgia, is preparing and starts selling Coca Cola refreshments, 9 glasses a day for 5c a glass at the Jacobs’ pharmacy charger. In 1886, Coca Cola has sales totaling 50$.

In 1881, G. Chandler from Atlanta Georgia buys Coca Cola for 2300$ and becomes President, while in modern day Roberto Goizueta stays president until 1997, Doug Ivester until 1999 and Doug Taft from 1999 till today.

It is said that J.S. Pemberton used for making this drink: cofeine, citric acid, linden juice, water, caramel, while the taste was given by essences like orange, vanilla, cinnamon, mace. You mix the cofeine, citric acid and linden juice, you boil and you add the vanilla and the rest of the condiments; you leave it for 24 hours and mix the syrup with water and carbon dioxide and there you have Coca Cola. Kola is added from the fruit wearing the same name; Pemberton used Kola because it had a high concentration of cofeine. This Coca Cola formula seems to be the original, but since people tried to copy the formula, it had changed several times in history.

Candler, who ran the business in 1981, made some changes, added glycerin for a better conservation, reduced the cofeine quantity and replaced the citric acid with phosphoric acid and sugar with corn-based sweeteners; this brought the number of ingredients to 7 instead of 6 in Pemberton’s recipe.

Candler wanted to keep the new Coca Cola formula a secret and created a system that codified the ingredients on the label by numbers from 1 to 9, so Candler and Frank Robinson were the only ones allowed in the laboratories where Coca Cola was prepared. The fabrication and bottling process is protected, the ingredients are kept secret and the essences produced are undiluted and well analyzed for safety and quality reasons.

Every batch of undiluted essences is codified, packed and prepared for the next step – adding the sweetener and the water. The case in which the mixture is prepared is buit from stainless steel and kept very clean; the water is purified in several steps and then the sweeteners are added. In the past, sugar was the only sweetener used in the refreshments industry, but since the 70’s when technology became available, corn extract is the most used sweetener and its quality is controlled by the computer.

The final moment of the process is the bottling: syrup, water and carbon dioxide are added together in a bottle, using the latest technology; the whole process has the goal to assure the quality of the product.

2. The mission of the company

The mission of the company is the goal for the achievement of which the company is founded. In time it can be modified, either due to external or internal factors or a combination of both. A company has to know its mission well in order to carry on its activity more efficient.

The Coca Cola Company has declared the following mission points:

- maintaining the quality of the products no matter where they are produced (Excellency)

- Maintaining the respect for individuals, society and environment; Coca Cola is always respecting the laws and adapting to local values. The company’s experts always try to understand the consumers and their customs (responsibility)

- protecting the natural environment and the consumer’s health (responsibility)

- creating contacts with the consumers, employees, business partners, shareholders and the company itself (integrity)

- maintaining the quality of the services implied by the production process

The motto that the company is using, “Think global, act local” is the sheerest example of running a business at international level.

3. Analysis on Coca Cola company activity

In 1992 Coca Cola makes its entrance on the Romanian market; at the moment they own 7 bottling facilities in several locations of Romania. At the beginning they only introduced three drinks: Coca Cola, Fanta orange and Sprite. At the moment, the range of drinks looks like this:

• Coca Cola regular, light

• Fanta lemon, orange, Madness (grape), exotic, berries, Shokata (elder berries and lemon)

• Sprite

In 1996 Coca Cola is selling on the Eastern European market twice as its main competitor Pepsi. Following a secret recipe, the Coca Cola Company founded in Atlanta, Georgia is making drinks in 4 factories, drinks that are bottled and distributed by authorized companies. Because the investors weren’t willing to take the risk of investments in Eastern Europe, the mother company itself financed the production facilities in Romania and Poland; there was a study saying that for every job created by direct investment in Romania and Poland, 10 more jobs were created indirectly as a result. In order to avoid the stagnancy of the consumption, the Coca Cola Company is constantly launching different products on the market; 5.5 billion consumers are drinking Coca Cola today (2.4 billion in 1984).

At the beginning of 1999, sales ran to $ 83.3 billion and a profit of $ 15.5 billion; at the beginning of the year, the company held 39200 employees. They fired 5200 and 34000 remained; the company sales 1 billion glasses a day in more than 200 countries, under 231 brands (Coke, Diet coke, Sprite, Nestea, etc…).

On the 21 of February, 2001 Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble sign a protocol for combined sales between some of the Coca Cola brands and the P&G shacks; they found a new company together and they are estimating sales of $ 4 billion for 2001. For over one century, the Atlanta Company has been the absolute leader of juice essences and non-alcoholic drinks. At the moment they have 34.000 employees in the whole world, 231 brands sold in more than 200 countries.