The History of Pepsi-Cola

Pepsi first started out as “Brad’s drink” in the early 1890’s, developed and produced by a pharmacist named Caleb Bradham. Bradham changed the name of his drink to Pepsi-Cola in 1898, after the beverage ingredients pepsin and cola nuts. The ingredients for the soft drink at the time were carbonated water, sugar, vanilla, rare oils, pepsin and cola nuts.

Pepsi-Cola was trademarked in 1903 and has remained unchanged since. The logo is a different story though – it’s been changed and has seen many transformations over the years.

Bradham lost the company after gambling on the price of sugar during WWI. He believed sugar prices would continue to rise, but they didn’t and the company went bankrupt in 1923. In 1931 the company was bought out by the Loft Candy Company who overhauled the popular soft drink and in part of their marketing strategy doubled the quantity from a 6 ounce pack to a 12 ounce pack for 10 cents.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, Coca-Cola was offered the opportunity to purchase Pepsi-Cola on three different occasion and declined on each occasion.

Who Designed the Pepsi-Cola Logo

Bradham’s neighbour, an artist, designed the first Pepsi logo in exchange for ninety-seven shares of stock for the new company.

Image of the First Pepsi-Cola Logo

The newest logo was designed by the Arnell Group in 2008 which included complete branding services for a whopping one million dollars. The new logo was subject to a lot of controversy – many thought it was a ridiculous decision on Pepsi’s part because the public claimed it was a poorly designed logo for a huge cost.

Image of the Latest Pepsi-Cola Logo

The Pepsi-Cola Identity Elements

The original logo was a scribbled font script in red, with the two words joined by hyphenation and decorative infinity circles connecting the descender of the ‘P’ and ‘C’ characters. A couple years later in 1905 the logo underwent some subtle changes with modifications to the script font used. In 1906 the slogan “The Original Pure Food Drink” was introduced.

The script font was used for the Pepsi brand until 1962 when a sans-serif font was introduced in heavy black type, dropping the hyphenated Cola marking the product simply as “Pepsi”. Pepsi’s brand continued to see changes over the next 50 years, integrating a red and blue sphere centered with a white wave.

Timeline of the all Pepsi-Cola Identities

Tell us about some of your favorite iconic Identities. Or tell us what you think about the iconic Pepsi-Cola logo or about your favourite version of the Pepsi-Cola logo. Leave your comments in the section below.