By 1938, Coca-Cola was bigger than ever and had become a national institution that accounted for approximately half of all soft-drink sales in the U.S. It was a mass-produced and marketed drink consumed by both the rich and poor. According to William Allen, a famous journalist and social commentator,
Coca-Cola was the “sublimated essence of all that America stood for a decent thing honestly made, universally distributed, conscientiously improved with the years“(Standage 178). After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941,
America joined World War II and sent millions of soldiers to serve their nation overseas, and Coca-Cola followed them. It was sold to soldiers for five cents as a nontoxic and refreshing beverage during exercises and on the war front.
Soldiers sent letters to the company to keep supplying the drink without fail because it was the most effective “morale-building product for the boys in the service (Standage 180). The company used this opportunity to popularize the drink and convince lawmakers in Washington to pass laws that favored the drink. It was exempted from sugar tax and allowed to build bottling plants and soda fountains on military bases.
During the war, Coca-Cola built over sixty bottling plants and sold over ten billion drinks all over the world. After the war, the bottling plants remained and production was diverted to civilians.
By 1945, Coca-Cola was known worldwide except in Antarctica, and as (Standage 183) states, “the war ensured "the almost universal acceptance of the goodness of Coca-Cola." Concisely, Coca-Cola relied heavily on the war to popularize a high-caffeine drink based on the boost it offered soldiers.
During and after the war, government favors allowed the drink to be sold to civilians and easily spread globally to become one of the most popular carbonated soda beverages in the world to date.
Cocacolonization is a term used to refer to the influence that Coca-Cola had especially in Communist countries. The drink was linked to American and Western values of capitalism, freedom, and democracy and did not appeal to communists. Coca-Cola stood “for everything that was deemed wrong with capitalism, particularly the notion that satisfying consumers' often trivial demands should be the organizing principle of the economy” (Standage 184).
The term was initially used by communist supporters who were objecting to the construction of bottling plants in France. By then, the company had already established plants in all countries. In communist countries where protests occurred, they only offered the company free publicity and gave Coca-Cola an illicit, exotic name.
Communists reacted to Coca-Cola’s popularity by waging negative publicity campaigns against the drink. It was stated to cause health defects like causing hair to turn white. In Austria, for example, communists claimed that bottling plants would be converted to atomic-bomb factories (Standage 185). The rivalry culminated in the creation of Fanta by Nazi German communists to counter Coca-Cola's influence. However, amidst communist opposition, the drink maintained its popularity, and high-level officials who loved Coca-Cola would import and drink it secretly. Even in places where the west fought communists in proxy wars, Coca-Cola found its way there.
Pepsi, its greatest rival, leveraged the opposition against Coca-Cola and established its presence where Coca-Cola was rejected, especially in communist countries. The popularity and influence that Coca-Cola had during and after both Second World War and the Cold War angered the communist supporters. Many strategies used by communists to attack Coca-Cola succeeded in their countries but failed in the West. In a way, they helped Coca-Cola become famous after the break of the communism and Soviet.
References
Standage, Tom. History of the World in 6 Glasses. Annotated, Walker Publishing Company, 2006.