The original Coca-Cola bottle was one that Biedenharn was already using to put soda water into with equipment he had bought from Sarasota Springs. The design of the "hobble skirt" Coca-Cola bottle was based on the cacao pod. We had trouble talking to the server. It is believed it was modeled after the bottles used in the 1700s to hold the German spa waters. In England, during the same time period, a bottle called the torpedo shape bottle (circa 1800-1900), made of stoneware, was being used for carbonated waters. 98-101). Without it, the bottom would be as soft and flimsy as the sides and the bottoms take most of the abuse in packaging, shipping and consumer use. Loewy later designed products for Coca-Cola such as cans, coolers, and vending machines, which likely led to this misconception. In the actual story of the bottle, there are no fortuitous accidents that work to impel Fate (i.e., no heat wave that shuts down plant operations, leaving folks with idle time in which to dream up a better bottle), and no dumb mistakes that turn out well (i.e., no dunderheaded confusion of one page of the encyclopedia for another). Hmmm… wonder what that is? Your right that juice and water bottles do not have such an extreme shape, but they do have some, let’s say, “ackward” shaping or the bottoms have thicker, stiffer plastic. He also called the Coke bottle “the most perfectly designed package in the world,” and it’s unlikely he’d have been that arrogant if he were describing his own design.). By 1909, there were almost 400 bottling plants, most of them family-owned. June-July 1986   (pp. The Soda Bottle Shape. Delicious. The cacao pod was chosen by mistake after someone ended up on the wrong page of the encyclopedia. A misunderstanding occurred, leading Edwards to the wrong page of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Claude then went on to create a line of fruity beverages that he called "NEHI" in the 1920′s. As in chocolate. However, a picture of a cacao pod in the Encyclopedia Britannica gave Dean a further jolt of inspiration: he realized that the striations on that rather odd-looking gourd-like thing might serve as the jumping-off point for a workable bottle design. Soda/mineral water and beer are prime examples of products very closely identified with certain distinct bottle shapes that … Many collectors built their collection around one specific brand of soda such as Coca-Cola or Pepsi Cola. Instead, the preceding account is a highly colored version of what actually occurred. While the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute’s plant manager Alex Samuelson and plant employee, Clyde Edwards were tangentially involved in the process that led to the design of what became the quintessential Coca-Cola bottle, the actual designer and the man who ultimately turned his own artistic concept into the prototype bottle was Earl R. Dean, the supervisor of the bottle molding room at that facility. To this day people wonder where the design came from, and some odd theories about its origins have surfaced over the years, including one about its being modeled after a Victorian hooped dress. The proprietor, Joseph A. Biedenharn, was a customer of The Coca-Cola Company, buying Coca-Cola syrup and serving the soft drink to customers at his soda … ), Instead, acutely aware of the need for a better container for its product, in 1915 Coca-Cola sponsored a design competition among its bottle suppliers. Please try again. If the bottle is plastic and contains soda, the bottom is shaped like that. Coca-Cola’s Different Bottle Shapes Coca-Cola was first bottled by the Biedenharn Candy Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1894. Stattmann, Ed. First designed in 1970 by PepsiCo and improved into the 1990s, the two-liter bottle is an imperfect mainstay of the soft drink industry. Just second hand knowledge. The proprietor, Joseph A. Biedenharn, was a customer of The Coca-Cola Company, buying Coca-Cola syrup and serving the soft drink to customers at his soda fountain. The design of the contour bottle has had small modifications over years, but has remained essentially the same. Codd patent Porter beer bottles, which were used to bottle ales, porters the opposite, with over 12,000 example from North America and few others Is there a particular purpose for that shape (other than making your drink precariously perched and subject to tipping at any moment)? Basically same reason pint glasses have a slight texture in the bottom. Vintage Sparkling Pepsi-Cola soda bottle with full contents. The people at The Coca-Cola Company realized there was a need for a new design for their bottles in order to create a more distinctive look and discourage imitators. Get free Outlook email and calendar, plus Office Online apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. in the rest of the world. Within the next few decades there were more than twenty soda companies selling bottled soda and several additional soda bottle shapes were being used. In 1955 additional glass bottle sizes were introduced; the 10-, 12- and 26-ounce sizes. Special patents also dictated a bottle's shapes. more popular than others. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com. Ben Thomas, one of the original bottlers of Coke, was quoted as saying, “We need a bottle which a person can recognize as a Coca-Cola bottle when he feels it in the dark.”, A competition to design the best bottle was initiated, and eleven designs were shown to a Coca-Cola committee in Atlanta. Small, medium, large, different brands even. Hutch Soda Pop Bottle - Rare 1890s Club Variant .