Ben Gilbert

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Okay, David, so the bottle.

So in 1912, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company sent a note to all of its members that Coca-Cola Company has this great distinctive logo.

It's highly protected in the courts.

We've got the trademark on it, but we don't have a way to protect our business as the bottlers.

So the proposal is that the members all join together to create a distinctive package for the products.

And so in April of 1915, trustees of Coca-Cola Bottling Association vote to develop such a distinctive bottle.

Help us help you.

Wow.

So they create this design brief and they send it around to 10 different glass companies around the country that says, we want to develop a bottle so distinct that you would recognize it by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground.

So simple.

It's like, what do you really want the product to be?

And so the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana designs the bottle that goes on to win the contest.

You all know what it looks like, the contour bottle.

Interestingly, so it's got this sort of wide top and then sort of a, as one of the books put it, a snatched waist, which is why they call it the Mae West bottle.

It's this Georgia green color.

But hilariously, the first version of it was actually much more round than

And you might wonder why this sort of striated, striped, super round pod.

Something got lost in translation, and the bottle was designed to look like the cocoa plant.

The cocoa pod that you smash open to get out cocoa beans.