{"id":49330,"date":"2015-03-03T02:54:08","date_gmt":"2015-03-03T01:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/?p=49330"},"modified":"2021-01-07T18:21:01","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T17:21:01","slug":"coca-cola-contour-bottle-turns-100-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/coca-cola-contour-bottle-turns-100-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Coca-Cola Contour Bottle Turns 100 This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"coca-colaThis year, Coca-Cola\u2019s iconic contour bottle celebrates its 100th<\/sup> anniversary<\/a>. Back in 1915, the Root Glass Company developed the bottle design after the Coca-Cola Company asked a number of manufacturers to develop a design that would make it more distinctive. Specifically, the company asked manufacturers to create a design<\/a> that wasn\u2019t just distinctive—it had to be so distinctive that it could be recognized only by touch and still recognized visually even after it shattered.<\/p>\n

The bottle design that the Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana created was based on a picture of a cocoa pod that the primary designer, Earl R. Dean, found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He used that image to create a prototype, which the Coca-Cola Company selected as its new bottle design. By 1916, the new bottle was available to consumers.<\/p>\n

In 1923, the design was patented<\/a> with the company obtaining a second patent on the design in 1937, which enabled the company to protect its bottle design for another 14 years. It took nearly 50 more years for the Coca-Cola contour bottle with the Coca-Cola name on it to be trademarked in 1960, which gave the Coca-Cola Company protection indefinitely. It took another three more years for the bottle shape alone to be trademarked (1977).<\/p>\n

While the bottle has evolved over the years, it still retains that instantly recognizable contour shape. Today, all of that intellectual property is worth billions of dollars to the Coca-Cola Company, and the company enforces its patent and trademark protections vigorously.<\/p>\n

To celebrate the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the contour bottle, Coca-Cola launched a special website<\/a> and a year-long campaign that will include seven key initiatives:<\/p>\n