A large advertisement made to resemble a Pepsi cup at the theme park, Nickelodeon Universe inside the Mall of America. The first of many new designs of Pepsi cans which were released in 2007. In 1975, Pepsi introduced the Pepsi Challenge marketing campaign where PepsiCo set up a blind tasting between Pepsi-Cola and rival Coca-Cola. During these blind taste tests the majority of participants picked Pepsi as the better tasting of the two soft drinks. PepsiCo took great advantage of the campaign with television commercials reporting the test results to the public.[11]. In 1996, PepsiCo launched the highly successful Pepsi Stuff marketing strategy. By 2002, the strategy was cited by Promo Magazine as one of 16 "Ageless Wonders" that "helped redefine promotion marketing."[12] In 2007, PepsiCo redesigned their cans for the fourteenth time, and for the first time, included more than thirty different backgrounds on each can, introducing a new background every three weeks
During the Great Depression, Pepsi gained popularity following the introduction in 1929 of a 12-ounce bottle. Initially priced at 10 cents, sales were slow, but when the price was slashed to five cents, sales increased substantially. With a radio advertising campaign featuring the jingle "Pepsi cola hits the spot / Twelve full ounces, that's a lot / Twice as much for a nickel, too / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you," Pepsi encouraged price-watching consumers to switch, obliquely referring to the Coca-Cola standard of six ounces a bottle for the price of five cents (a nickel), instead of the 12 ounces Pepsi sold at the same price.[5] Coming at a time of economic crisis, the campaign succeeded in boosting Pepsi's status. In 1936 alone 500,000,000 bottles of Pepsi were consumed. From 1936 to 1938, Pepsi-Cola's profits doubled.[6] Pepsi's success under Guth came while the Loft Candy business was faltering. Since he had initially used Loft's finances and facilities to establish the new Pepsi success, the near-bankrupt Loft Company sued Guth for possession of the Pepsi-Cola company. A long legal battle, Guth v. Loft, then ensued, with the case reaching the Delaware Supreme Court and ultimately ending in a loss for Guth. Loft now owned Pepsi, and the two companies did a merger, then immediately spun off the Loft company
Origins Pepsi was first made in New Bern, North Carolina, in the United States in the early 1890s by pharmacistCaleb Bradham. In 1898, "Brad's Drink" was changed to "Pepsi-Cola" and later trademarked on June 16, 1903.[1] There are several theories on the origin of the word "pepsi". The only two discussed within the current PepsiCo website are the following: Caleb Bradham bought the name "Pep Kola" from a local competitor and changed it to Pepsi-Cola. The word Pepsi comes from the Greek word "Hope" (πέψη), which is a medical term, describing the food dissolving process within one's stomach. Dyspepsia also a medical term describes a problem with one's stomach to dissolve foods properly. Another theory regarding the name's origins is that Caleb Bradham and his customers simply thought the name sounded good and reflected the fact that the drink had some kind of "pep" in it because it was a carbonated drink. It was made of carbonated water, sugar, vanilla, rare oils, and kola nuts. Whether the original recipe included the enzymepepsin is disputed.[2][3] In 1903, Bradham moved the bottling of Pepsi-Cola from his drugstore into a rented warehouse. That year, Bradham sold 7,968 gallons of syrup. The next year, Pepsi was sold in six-ounce bottles, and sales increased to 19,848 gallons. In 1924, Pepsi received its first logo redesign since the original design of 1905. In 1926, the logo was changed again. In 1929, automobile race pioneer Barney Oldfield endorsed Pepsi-Cola in newspaper ads as "A bully drink...refreshing, invigorating, a fine bracer before a race". In 1929, the Pepsi-Cola Company went bankrupt during the Great Depression- in large part due financial losses incurred by speculating on wildly fluctuating sugar prices as a result of World War I. Assets were sold and Roy C. Megargel bought the Pepsi trademark.[4] Eight years later, the company went bankrupt again. Pepsi's assets were then purchased by Charles Guth, the President of Loft Inc. Loft was a candy manufacturer with retail stores that contained soda fountains. He sought to replace Coca-Cola at his stores' fountains after Coke refused to give him a discount on syrup. Guth then had Loft's chemists reformulate the Pepsi-Cola syrup formula.
