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Pepsi

April 24, 2007 – 10:13 pm

Pepsi

 [[Pepsi]]-Cola is a soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Pepsi-Cola was first made by pharmacist Caleb Bradham in 1890s in New Bern, North Carolina in United States. The drink was initially known as “Brad’s drink” and was renamed as “Pepsi-Cola” in 1898. The name was trademarked on June 16, 1903. There are several theories regarding the origin of name “Pepsi”. According to one theory, Bradham bought the name “Pep Kola” from a local competitor and changed it to “Pepsi-Cola”. Another theory is that “Pepsi-Cola” is anagram of “Episcopal”, a large church just across the street from Bradham’s drugstore. Even though there is a plaque at the site of original drugstore stating this, PepsiCo has denied this theory. Some say that the name “Pepsi” was chosen because it sounded good and it had “pep”, it being a carbonated drink. Pepsi was first intended to cure stomach pains, and many thought that Bradham coined the name “Pepsi” from “dyspepsia”, stomach ache, or maybe from the fact that pepsin was used to treat upset stomachs. Pepsi initially consisted carbonated water, vanilla, rare oils, and kola nuts.    

Bradham moved bottling of Pepsi-Cola from his drugstore into a rented warehouse. The same year he sold 7,968 gallons of the Pepsi syrup. After Pepsi introduced six-ounce bottles next year, sales increased and reached 19,848 gallons. The logo of Pepsi was redesigned in 1905 for the first time since the original logo was designed in 1898. the logo was designed again in 1906.

The Pepsi-Cola Company suffered financial losses due to the fluctuating prices of sugar around World War I and in 1929 the company was bankrupt. Roy C. Megargel bought the Pepsi trademark. The company went bankrupt again after eight years and this time Pepsi’s assets were bought by Charles Guth. Charles Guth was president of Lofts Inc. Loft owned retail stores and had soda fountains. After Coke refused to give Loft a discount on its syrup, he wanted to replace Coca-Cola at his store’s fountains. Loft employed chemists as he was candy manufacturer and his chemists reformulated the Pepsi-Cola formula.

Pepsi gained popularity during The Great Depression after the introduction of 12-ounce bottle in 1934. Sales soared when the bottle’s price, initially 10 cents, was slashed to 5 cents as Coca-Cola was being sold at six ounces for a nickel (five cents). Pepsi marketed the new bottle with the jingle “Pepsi cola hits the spot / Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot / Twice as much for a nickel, too / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you”. The move to give more to consumer and effective marketing yielded results and Pepsi’s profits doubled during 1936 to 1938.

When Loft Company was almost bankrupt, the company sued Guth for possession of the Pepsi Cola Company as he had used Loft’s finances and facilities to establish Pepsi. Guth lost the case after a long legal battle and Loft was the new owner of the company. Walter Mack became the new President of Pepsi-Cola.

Due to rising prices after the war Pepsi could no longer sell 12 ounces for a nickel. Some bottlers reduced quantity to 8 or 10 ounces while keeping the prices constant while some bottlers sold 12 ounce bottles at a higher price.

When Pepsi had Alfred Steele as its new President in early 1950s, the formula was slightly changed by removing a small amount of sugar. The marketing of Pepsi also went for a major overhaul as it was no longer referred to as an “economic” drink, but was marketed as “The Light Refreshment” and an affluent drink. Pepsi had considerable marketing success with the youth market when it launched the “Think Young” campaign in 1961 and again in 1963 with their “Pepsi Generation” campaign. After the success of a diet cola of a competitor, Royal crown Company, Pepsi introduced Diet Pepsi in 1964. Same year Pepsi bought Mountain Dew from Tip Corporation. In 1965, the company became PepsiCo. after merger with Frito-Lay.

In 1975 a blind testing between Pepsi-Cola and rival Coca-Cola was done by Pepsi under name of “Pepsi Challenge”. In these blinds tests, Pepsi was choice of majority of participants. The reason for participants favoring Pepsi is attributed to the higher sugar content present in Pepsi. PepsiCo used the results of the blind test by coming out with commercials reporting the test results.

Pepsi has many variants of which Diet Pepsi is the most popular and contains no sugar and has zero calories. Pepsi Max, Pepsi ONE, Caffeine-Free Pepsi and Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi are the other popular low calorie variants of the drink. Pepsi also came out with many fruit variants of the drink like Wild Cherry Pepsi (1988), Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi (2005), Pepsi Lime (2005), and Diet Pepsi Lime (2005). It also came out with Pepsi Jazz diet cola with Strawberry and Cream flavor and Black Cherry French Vanilla in 2006. Pepsi Twist was introduced so as to give competition to Coca-Cola’s lemon flavored products. Crystal Pepsi, a transparent cola devoid of caffeine, sodium and any preservative was introduced in 1992 only to be phased very next year. Pepsi-Blue, a blue-colored berry cola, was introduced in 2002 and withdrawn from the market in 2004. Pepsi Gold has been recently released in the market recently. Pepsi has also launched some coffee-flavored versions of Pepsi. In 2005 Pepsi Cappuccino was launched in Romania and Bulgaria, Pepsi Tarik in Malaysia and Pepsi Cafechino in India.  

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