Cola is a type of soft drink that has become arguably the most recognizable and favored drink since it was invented.

Since its creation in the United States back in 1886, it has spread to even some of the more remote places of the world. Interestingly, it is made with the same plant that is an ingredient for the addictive drug cocaine. Similar to the addiction to cocaine, some people are addicted to the taste of cola as to drink it everyday. One of the reasons contributing to its rise may be that in the early days, cola drinks contained cocaine. Although taste was an important aspect of its popularity, was the rise of cola purely due to that?  There may additionally be other factors most people overlook that have been crucial to its popularity. This paper will address one such factor: the logos of cola drink brands. It will explore one major cola drink brand that has been prevalent since the dawn of cola.The logo of the Coca-Cola company, that everyone knows has been through many changes in the past.

However, none of those changes were major. The official logo of Coca-Cola in the beginning was a black stylized script font of the word “Coca-Cola” with the word “trade mark” inside the “C” in the “Coca-Cola.” In the 1950s, Coca-Cola placed their logo inside a red circle, with a portrait of the now iconic Coca-Cola bottle behind it. While keeping with the script font logo, the company also added the visualization of actual cola in the background of the logo, thus further emboldening the image of the brand to those who saw this image. The fishtail logo was first introduced in 1958 so that the many stores and restaurants as the display signs and it has become popular with the businesses due to the usage of sign increasing the traffic and business. Between 1969 and 1985, the logo was changed to a design with a red square that had the white wave line  and the word “Enjoy” at the top of the script logo. 1985 through 1987 was a bad time for the Coca-Cola company because for the first time in history, they were out-sold by Pepsi, their number-one competitor.

Because of this, they had to take drastic measures to remake their image in order to appeal to the crowd once again. The initial Coke logos mentioned all have been similar with the black, stylized script font. To change their old image, they rebranded themselves as the well-known “Coke,” which was written in a thick slab of serif font. However, the new branding was met with resistance as many decided to boycott the brand until the old Coca-Cola was restored. It is interesting to note that even though it had failed to bring the company back to the days of “glory” the name “Coke” has stuck with many people still today.

In a way, it was a successful way to change the consumers’ minds about a product that had been selling for over half-decade with just one change in design. In 1987, due to failures of the prior design they had gone back to the traditional script font logo Coca Cola design people were accustomed to. Only time time the white wave line was more integrated with the word Coca Cola in the logo.