Why Was the Coca Cola Bottle Designed to Survive Being Broken?

In 1915, Coca Cola had a recognition problem. Its straight sided bottles looked much like those used by rival drinks, and imitators could easily create similar labels. The company therefore asked glass manufacturers to design a package so distinctive that a customer could recognize it by touch in darkness, or identify it from its broken pieces on the ground.

A team at the Root Glass Company in Indiana searched reference books for clues about the drink’s ingredients. They found an illustration of a cocoa pod and apparently mistook it for the source of either coca or cola. The pod had an elongated shape with deep vertical grooves, and that mistaken botanical connection inspired the bottle’s ribbed curves.

The first design was too wide around the middle to move reliably through bottling machinery, so it was narrowed before entering production. Even in its modified form, however, the bottle retained the swelling waist and fluted surface that made it recognizable without a label.

The result succeeded for reasons its designers could hardly have anticipated. A shape created partly from confusion between cocoa and Coca Cola became one of the most recognizable commercial packages in the world. The bottle was not merely intended to look attractive on a shelf. It was designed so that the identity of the drink would remain legible through shape alone, even after the bottle itself had been shattered.