The Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola Company is an American company that manufactures nonalcoholic beverage recipes, concentrates and syrups. They are best known for their flagship beverage Coca-Cola, as well as all of the other incarnations such as Cherry Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero. The company does not actually manufacture beverages themselves, but instead licenses their recipe in syrup to bottlers who then create Coca-Cola. That explains why they compete so well against Pepsi-Cola, but have far fewer employees. In 2017, there were 61,800 employees working for Coca-Cola. Many of these positions were in manufacturing, but some of the other positions included technical, marketing, sales, brand development, and more. The headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia.

Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta Georgia. The formula and the brand were bought in 1894 by Asa Griggs Candler who then started the Coca-Cola Company with the headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. The company has been operated on a franchise system since 1889. The parent company only produces the concentrated syrup and that is sold to bottlers throughout the world who hold the rights to particular territories. For example, in North America, Coca-Cola Refreshments is the license holder; the list of brands that are associated or listed under the Coca-Cola umbrella number in the hundreds. In 2011, Coca-Cola bought out Honest Tea, as well as ZICO, a coconut water company, just two years later.

Coca-Cola products can be found all over the world including the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, Eurasia, Africa, and of course in North America. They are a publicly traded company with reported revenue of 33.1 billion in the last fiscal year and revenue per share of $7.78.