Coca-Cola has a history almost as colorful as the drink itself. The Coca-Cola Company’s headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia, where the beverage was first concocted in 1886. Since it’s invention by Dr. John S. Pemberton Coca Cola started it’s way to the top, blessed with some of the most visionary and inspired promoters, marketers and advertisers in advertising history.
9 November 2010
An Andy Warhol painting titled “Large Coca Cola” put the fizz into Sotheby’s New York contemporary art auction when it beat expectations and sold for $35.3 million.
The black and white Warhol, originally estimated to go for $20 million to $25 million.
Large Coca Cola at the Sotheby's art auction
Coca-Cola Halloween poster 1944
Halloween "Trick or Treat" poster from 1954
Coca-Cola Halloween poster from 1964
Wartime Ad Campaigns
“There’s a friendly phrase that speaks the allied language. It’s Have a “Coke.” Friendliness enters the picture when ice-cold Coca-Cola appears. Over tinkling glasses of ice-cold “Coke,” minds meet and hearts are closer together. It’s a happy custom that’s spreading ’round the globe.”
By 1944, Coca-Cola became known as “The Global High Sign.” This ad campaign showed men in uniform together enjoying Coca-Colas. The advertisements reinterpreted friendship and community.
American soldier in Alaska, Coca-Cola ad 1943
American soldiers in China, Coca-Cola ad 1943
American soldier in Iceland, Coca-Cola ad 1943
An image of a single Coca-Cola bottle that Andy Warhol painted in 1962
An icon of Pop Art, Large Coca-Cola is the last of four paintings of individual Coca-Cola bottles executed by Warhol in 1961 and 1962, and the largest of the group.
“Large Coca-Cola is a perfect example of the artist’s homage to advertising, highlighting the relationship between big business and the public through an enlarged icon of consumerism.”
Andy Warhol’s Large Coca-Cola will be auctioned in New York on 9 November 2010. The current estimate for the painting is about $25 million.
A masterfully-directed, poignant melodramatic comedy by director George Cukor and producer David O. Selznick, Dinner at Eight (1933) was filled with a tremendous cast of stars, who are all invited to a Manhattan formal dinner party during the height of the Depression. Many of the stars in the film first became known in silent cinema, including John and Lionel Barrymore, and Marie Dressler.
The cast of the movie "Dinner at eight" in Coca Cola advert 1933
Coca-Cola syrup container from 1906, it was a few years after cocaine was removed from the formula, which was around 1903.
Coca-Cola syrup container 1906
In the late 1960’s, Coca Cola spread out a huge amount of birdseed in St. Mark’s Square in the shape of their logo. It was immediately covered/consumed by 100’s of pigeons who clearly spelled out the Coca Cola logo, the aerial publicity photo was taken and it remains a very famous/infamous piece of advertising today.
Coca-Cola St Marc's square in Venice 1960s
The profit line 1959
It’s the bottler of Los Angeles announcement in the newspaper with a wholesale price list.
Bar-b and Bubble-up brands also belongs to Coca-Cola.
This newspaper ad from 1951 years is really weird, someone was selling ice cold Coca-Cola for 7 cents and getting 2 cents more than the rest of the country.
Newspaper ad from 1951, Coca-Cola for 7 cents
Maybe this somehow related to these ads from 1947 and 1949, where was 2 cents wartime tax included or maybe not…
1947 Coca Cola advertisement. Illustrated in vibrant color. Includes 2¢ wartime tax special pricing.
1949 Coca Cola advertisement. Illustrated in vivid color at the seaside with an ice cooler below. Price still included the 2¢ wartime tax.
Gil Elvgren – a student of Haddon Sundblom, Elvgren is perhaps best known for drawing and painting pin-up girls. His style was so similar to Sundblom’s that he could finish paintings that his mentor had started. Working with Sundblom Gil Elvgren contributed to various Coca-Cola ads himself.
The first advertising artwork for Coca-Cola that Elvgren worked on was in 1939. It is a scene of a pilot and a flight attendant in an airport snack bar having a Coca-Cola with a plane flying past the window behind them.
"Take of... refreshed" 1939 by Gil Elvgren
"The Pause That Refreshes" 1939 by Gil Elvgren
"Home refreshment" 1944 by Gil Elvgren
How Boeing company advertised space exploration and defense programs in the early 1960s
How well known brands advertised during World War II [15 pics]
Coca-Cola ads in Nazi Germany
Coca-Cola “Feel The Curves”
Coca-Cola WWII American airplane posters