Pepsi

Caleb Bradham, a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina, first mixed up what would become Pepsi in 1893. He called it Brad's Drink, a name that lasted five years until he rebranded it Pepsi-Cola in 1898. The name suggested digestive benefits, though it had nothing to do with pepsin. Bradham formally incorporated the Pepsi-Cola Company in 1902. But the business hit hard times and declared bankruptcy in 1923. Charles Guth, a candy manufacturer, bought the trademark and reformulated the syrup, moving operations to Long Island City, New York. It was Guth who, during the Great Depression, bet big on a simple value proposition: a 12-ounce bottle for a nickel, double the size of Coca-Cola's 6-ounce bottle at the same price. The gamble paid off, helped along by the first nationally broadcast radio jingle, Nickel, Nickel, which lodged in the public ear.

Pepsi kept innovating through the decades. In 1941, it became the first company to trade stock on the New York Stock Exchange. Walter S. Mack, elected president in 1938, turned Pepsi into a modern marketing machine. Alfred N. Steele took over in 1950, and his wife, Hollywood actress Joan Crawford, became an unofficial brand ambassador. The company was the first to introduce two-liter bottles in 1970 and lightweight recyclable plastic bottles. In 1965, the Pepsi-Cola Company merged with Frito-Lay to form PepsiCo, with Donald M. Kendall as CEO and Herman Lay as board chair. The newly combined company employed 19,000 people and reported $510 million in annual revenues. Today PepsiCo's portfolio spans over 500 brands, with 23 generating more than $1 billion each year, including Mountain Dew, Lay's, Doritos, Quaker Oats, Gatorade, and Tropicana.

The cola wars with Coca-Cola defined much of Pepsi's marketing history. The Pepsi Challenge, a blind taste test launched in the 1970s, showed consumers preferred Pepsi's sweeter flavor, a result that rattled the competition. Coca-Cola's disastrous New Coke launch in 1985 handed Pepsi a golden opportunity to scoop up disgruntled drinkers. Internationally, Pepsi made early inroads: a barter deal with the Soviet Union in 1974 traded Pepsi syrup for Stolichnaya vodka and ships, making it the first American consumer product sold in the USSR. The brand entered India in 1987 through local partnerships. Not every move was a win. A 1989 Madonna advertisement was pulled after controversy, and the 1992 Pepsi Number Fever promotion in the Philippines accidentally printed a winning cap number that led to riots. Under current CEO Ramon Laguarta, who took over in 2018, PepsiCo has pushed the PepsiCo Positive sustainability agenda, aiming to improve health profiles across its product lines by 2030. The company reported over $91 billion in net revenues in 2023, with nearly half coming from international markets, and employs roughly 318,000 people globally. [edit]