WHERE THEY CAME FROM
Coca-Cola wasn't always the monolithic brand it is today. Its namesake drink began humbly in an Atlanta pharmacy. Its creator, Dr. John Pemberton, began selling the elixir, made out of kola nuts and coca leaves, as a cure for headaches and other ailments in 1886. But Pemberton was in ill health (his own potion couldn’t cure him), so had to sell off his fledgling enterprise. Another Atlanta druggist, Asa Candler, bought his company in 1891. Candler signed a bottling agreement in 1899, and by the 1920s, Coca-Cola was being bottled in 1,000 plants.

WHAT THEY DO
From Minnesota to Mumbai, the soft-drink company markets the American spirit. Some of its most popular products include Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Sprite, Minute Maid, Nestea, and Dasani. In 2006, Coca-Cola raked in $24 billion in revenue, with 400 separate brands in more than 200 countries, via a network of thousands of franchised bottling plants.


WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
Coca-Cola produces about 1.4 billion of the 52 billion beverages served worldwide each day. Credit that market share to the worldwide-expansion strategy of former owner Robert Woodruff and his decision, at the outbreak of World War II, to provide low-cost Coke to American servicemen around the globe. Eager to improve morale, General Dwight Eisenhower asked Coca-Cola to build bottling plants near battlefronts so that soldiers could have access to Coke, as something to remind them of home. By the end of the war, Coca-Cola had come to symbolize the American way.

Over the past 50 years, Coke would have made Candler proud through its consistent innovation in packaging, including aluminum cans, which became widely available in 1960, and plastic bottles, which were first used in 1977.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG
What Coca-Cola got wrong can be summed up in two words: New Coke. Despite what $4 million in market research had predicted, the public disliked the taste of New Coke, introduced in 1985, so much that Coca-Cola received more than 40,000 letters complaining about the product. After only 87 days, Coke cried uncle and reintroduced the old formula. The performance of two other new products, C2 (which had half the sugar of regular Coke) and Coca-Cola Blak (coffee-flavored Coke), has also left the company with a bitter aftertaste.

The sudden death of C.E.O. Roberto Goizueta from lung cancer in 1997 hit the company and its stock price hard. Management’s missed opportunities didn’t help either: The company botched an attempt to acquire Gatorade in 2000 and came late to the lucrative bottled-water market.

WHAT’S NEXT
Coke has dipped back into the past for its future. C.E.O. Neville Isdell came out of retirement in 2004 to help rescue the lagging company, which was becoming known for an aversion to change and a less-than-spry group of board members. Rather than move Coke away from beverages, Isdell has focused on developing new energy drinks such as Tab Energy and Full Throttle. He has also shifted the company's attention toward bottled water and sports drinks, which have replaced carbonated beverages as big growth drivers in the industry. Through his strategies, Isdell has managed to level the slide in Coke's stock price but has yet to make it soar. -Liz Gunnison