The evolution of the Coca-Cola bottle

It all started with a brown-coloured syrup, which was relatively harmless, sold only at pharmacies. You've guessed it: we are talking about Coca-Cola, the most famous soft drink in the world. The reasons for this success were certainly not the syrup's magical properties (the syrup didn't take long to leave the shelves), but mostly the several, extremely well crafted marketing campaigns, and a few strokes of luck. One of those was its happy association with Santa Claus; the other was the ingenious design of its bottle.

When the syrup business didn't expand, conventional, flat bottles were used, with a cork and a paper label to identify the product. When it was transformed into a gasified drink, it rose the problem of conserving it without losing the gas. The solution found was a rubber-revested metal lid, with an original sealing system, the Hutchinson system. However, this sealing process didn't last for long with the widespread use of the metal cap and the crown-shaped bottle's neck.

The company started using this kind of containers, which was, at the time, innovative, but still produced it in a handcrafted way. Each bottle was made by a glazier worker, so no two bottles were exactly the same. Even so, they already bore the brand's logo engraved on the glass, on the cap or the label. The big leap took place in 1915 with the release of a public contest to design an exclusive bottle. The rest is well-known history, with the introduction of small variations and adjustments to the original concept. The famous bottle travelled across the twentieth century and into the present keeping its original shape, which has promoted its icon status. A good topic to ponder about: what is more important: shape or content?