4. The Coca-Cola Bottle Was Inspired By A Cacao Seed Pod Via foodwinenet.com In 1915, Coca-Cola’s soda bottles were shaped just like other soda bottles, and the only mark that differentiated their bottles from those of their competitors’ were the Coke paper labels on them. However, when the bottles were placed into water coolers (the standard at the time), the paper labels slid off, making the different brands of soda bottles difficult to tell apart. Coca-Cola then sponsored a bottle-designing competition among its bottle suppliers, and Indiana plant manager Alex Samuelson decided it would be a great idea to design the new bottle after either the coca plant or the kola nut, which were the ingredients Coke was named after. Supervisor of the bottle molding room Earl Dean was on board with Samuelson’s idea, and together, they they headed to the local library to do research on those two ingredients. However, they couldn’t find information about the coca plant or the kola nut. Nevertheless, a picture of the cacao pod gave Dean the idea for the “hobble skirt” bottle that Coke is today well-known for.
5. Coca-Cola Was Once Boycotted For Anti-Semitism Via israelandstuff.com Decades ago, some global companies refused to enter the Israel market because doing so could result in the rest of the Arab world refusing to conduct business with the establishment. A law in the U.S. actually made it illegal for companies to participate in the boycott against Israel, but because the law was so vague, violations were almost impossible to pin down. Coca-Cola, for example, was able to justify not bringing their business to Israel because the company had tried to establish a bottling plant in Israel in 1949, but since the Israeli government had blocked the move, Coca-Cola had a convenient reason why they served the rest of the Arab nations and not Israel. However, in April of 1966, the truth was revealed when a civil servant in Cairo came into possession of an Ethiopian-made Coke bottle, mistook the Amharic lettering on it for Hebrew, and publicly accused Coca-Cola of conducting business in Israel. Coca-Cola’s Egyptian bottling operations manager then assured the press that Coca-Cola would never allow Israel to have its own Coca-Cola franchise, thus pinning down the company and triggering accusations of anti-Semitism. In response, several Jewish U.S. establishments, including Mount Sinai Hospital and Nathan’s Famous Hotdog Emporium, announced they would stop serving Coke. That forced the company to announce that they would open a bottling plant in Tel Aviv, and the Arab League promptly placed Coca-Cola on its boycott list until 1991.
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