Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles With more than 1.9 billion drinks served every day, Coca Cola is one of the world's largest beverage companies. From its humble beginnings selling a single product at a drugstore for five cents a glass, the company now has a roster of 200 brands that includes Coke, Fanta, and Sprite. But with US soda consumption on the decline, the soft drink maker has been forced to pivot. In 2021, Coke launched Topo Chico hard seltzer, the company's first move into alcoholic beverages in the US in almost four decades. The company has also made recent investments into the sports performance drink category with Body Armor and the purchase of UK coffeemaker Costa. And while the pandemic has caused major disruptions in the first quarter of 2021 Coke reported net revenue was up 5% to $9 billion dollars. We were very focused over the last 12 months on focusing on really improving our marketing, we cut the portfolio of brands in half. We got really focused on our innovation pipeline, we work with our bottlers to really support the customers in new and different ways where they're open. And the sum of all that, along with a new organization we've stood off has allowed us as you say, to come back to the pre pandemic levels. Coke is eagerly anticipating some reopenings and vaccine rollouts. In the meantime, it faces a number of challenges, including further COVID-19 disruptions and ongoing tax litigation with the IRS. In November 2020, a US tax court said that Coca Cola had to pay the bulk of its $3.4 billion tax bill. Coke said it would ultimately prevail in litigation with the IRS, but that is potential liability could be as high as $12 billion. So after 135 years in business, can the soft drink giant stay on top? And what will the secular decline of sugar sweetened beverages in the US mean for the future of Coca Cola? Coca Cola traces its history to a soda fountain in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1886, pharmacist John Pemberton created a carmel colored syrup took the mixture to a nearby drugstore, where carbonated water was added, and the drink sold for five cents a glass. According to author Mark Pendergrast, the mixture contained caffeine, lots of sugar, and for the first few years, a small amount of extract from coke leaves, in other words, cocaine. And at first, their ads were primarily promoting it as a medicine. It was supposed to cure morphine addiction for one thing, which it did not in Pemberton's case unfortunately, but it was supposed to be an aphrodisiac. It was supposed to cure basically whatever ails you. In 1888, Pemberton began to sell the recipe to a well capitalized businessmen named Asa Candler, and by 1895 Coca Cola was available in every state in the US. By the turn of the century, Coca Cola adverts were appearing on clocks, trays, and posters and the drink was moving from soda fountains and into bottles. The company's advertising budget reach a million dollars in 1911, the equivalent of about $27 million today, And that became wildly successful by 1900-1910, there were Coca Cola bottling plants in every small town not only in the south, but throughout the country. By the 1920s and 30s, Coca Cola had reinvented itself as an all American soft drink and was entering new markets abroad. Exempted from sugar rationing during World War Two and in support of GIs, the company since 64 portable bottling plants around the globe, distributing more than 5 billion bottles of Coca Cola. And it wasn't just Americans who are hooked on sugary drinks. According to Pendergrast's book for 'God Country and Coca Cola', in Germany with the supply of key ingredients being curtailed due to the war, local operators invented a new drink Fanta. The flavored beverage the first new product from the company eventually made its way to the US in 1960. Coke produced a slew of other new innovations too. In 1960, steel 12 ounce cans were introduced, in 1963 tab, the company's first diet drink launched in 1971. The 'I'd like to Buy the World of Coke' commercial aired, and 1982 saw the debut of diet coke. In 1985, in an attempt to boost sales and compete with rival Pepsi in the soda wars, the company reformulated its classic soda and launched New Coke. The move was a major misstep, with widespread disapproval from fans and pundits alike. Just 79 days after the soda was launched the company reversed course and the original formula was reinstated. And while the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages in the US was rising during the 1990s, the company was about to face an even bigger threat. In the early 2000s, health and wellness concerns rose to the top of most consumers agenda. Soda consumption began to decline. The peak happened around in the early 2000s from a consumption standpoint, if you look at per capita consumption, and then it's it's been declining ever since. At the same time that we started to see, carbonated soft drinks decline in consumption was about the same time that we started to see increased concerns about sugars and simple carbohydrates. But despite that drop Americans and people everywhere were still hooked on soda. Between 2011 and 2014, almost half of us adults were drinking at least one sugar sweetened beverage a day. The soda market in the US is a $38.5 billion dollar business according to IBISWorld and includes companies like PepsiCo, Keurig Dr. Pepper, and of course Coca Cola. With consumers mostly stuck at home forgoing restaurants, concerts, and sporting events, the pandemic has been a mixed bag for soft drink makers. PepsiCo announced first quarter 2021 net sales reach more than $14.8 billion almost 7% higher than a year earlier, fueled by pandemic snacking in its Frito Lay division and higher sales of drinks like Bubly sparkling water and Starbucks ready to drink coffees. With more people reaching for a caffeine fix while working out of their home office, Keurig Dr. Pepper's coffee business got a jolt too. The company announced first quarter 2021 net sales of $2.9 billion more than 11% higher than the prior year. And while Coca Cola saw 2020 net revenue decline 11%, the soft drink maker bounced back with first quarter 2021 net revenue of $9 billion up 5% from a year earlier. Coca Cola has really been hit hard by the pandemic and it's definitely not out of the woods yet. Whilst there is uncertainty and volatility particularly in the near term ahead of us we feel confident about the corridors what we're setting for the top line and the bottom line guidance, and we believe that we will be able to emerge stronger from this crisis. A major issue for the soda giant. According to one analyst, Coke has more exposure to restaurants like McDonald's and sports venues than its peers PepsiCo or Keurig Dr. Pepper. What that means is they had a lot of market share to lose in those channels. And so as those channels closed, they had obviously disproportionate impact in terms of their revenues and their market share. To make up for that loss, the soft drink maker slashed its global workforce in 2020 by about 11% and trimmed its roster of brands from 400 to 200. Tab, the company's first diet soda was culled. But Coca Cola has several key advantages that will allow the company to reinvigorate its business according to analysts. For starters, Coke's diverse geographic position should provide the company with a steady stream of growth. Coca Cola products are sold in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Coke also has one of the world's largest non alcoholic beverage distribution systems and derives more than 40% of sales from developing and emerging economies with a growing middle class. In 2020, Coca Cola had net operating revenue of $33 billion, almost 66% of that came from outside the US. In developed markets where Coke is firmly established and competition is rife. The company has proven profit growth strategies driven by innovation. Even in the US as soda consumption has been declining, the value of the category has still been been increasing. According to Johnson, one strategy coke uses is price pack architecture, which generally refers to consumers willingness to pay extra for packaging innovations. In Coke's case, it discovered consumers not only preferred smaller size drinks, but were willing to pay more per ounce for them. Another key advantage Coke has positioned itself in an area of the supply chain that is less capital intensive and requires less labor and overhead than rival beverage companies like Pepsi. Most of Coke's trademark beverages are not packaged and delivered by the company. In general, Coke focuses its operations on producing the concentrate for its beverages and ships those mixtures to bottlers for processing packaging and distribution. In 2020, environmental group Break Free From Plastic took a global audit of plastic trash working with almost 15,000 volunteers in 55 countries collecting plastic bottles, coffee cup lids, shampoo bottles, and surgical masks in a two month cleanup. The group said that for the third year in a row soft drink giant Coca Cola emerged as a top global polluter with almost 14,000 Coca Cola branded plastics collected in 51 countries. According to Greenpeace as of 2018, Coca Cola has produced over 110 billion single use plastic bottles. The environmental group estimates than in the decade leading up to 2018, Coca Cola increased the number of single use plastic bottles by about a third accounting for almost 70% of Coke's packaging globally. While Coca Cola is not the only multinational corporation that relies on plastic packaging, the company's size illustrates the scale of the problem. Other top polluters according to Break Free From Plastic include