Word: colas
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...career in 1954 as a chemist at the company in Havana. That life changed abruptly after he fled Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1961, an event he called the most significant in his life. He and his wife got out with a suitcase and 100 shares of Coca-Cola, which he never sold. He rejoined the company in Florida and progressed through the ranks. By 1974, as head of Coke's labs, he was one of only two top chemists allowed to memorize the soda's secret formula...
...omnipresent but floundering symbol of American business and culture. Subsequently, Goizueta became one of the most highly regarded of all CEOs, having turned one of the world's most nonessential consumer products into a money spinner with annual sales of $18.5 billion. "No one loved the Coca-Cola company more than Roberto," said Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett, a Coke board member. "He was a great leader and a great gentleman...
...turned out that nothing added value more than the magic cola itself. He boosted Coke by stripping it down to its trademark. When he took over, Coke had flat growth and unprofitable businesses--ranging from shrimp farming to wine--that were draining the company's cash, not to mention a serious Pepsi challenge. On his watch, Coke's stock-market value rose from $4 billion to some $150 billion. Goizueta himself became a billionaire through his Coke stockholdings...
During Goizueta's tenure, Coke won the cola wars going away. In the $54 billion carbonated-beverage business, Coke owns 43% of the domestic market, to Pepsi's 31%. Coke has captured 48% of the world market, while Pepsi lags with 22%, estimates Beverage Digest. Goizueta, a globalist, has pushed sales hard outside the U.S. Coke gets 71% of its revenue abroad, while Pepsi generates more than 70% in the U.S. Last year PepsiCo's sales rose 5%, to $31.6 billion, but its earnings fell 28%, to $1.1 billion. Hindered by a strong dollar, which hurts foreign sales, Coke...
Coke has played kick the can with the big "Project Blue" global campaign that Pepsi launched last year, grabbing Pepsi strongholds like Russia and India. Goizueta orchestrated one of the cola war's most outrageous raids--buying half of Pepsi's Venezuelan bottler and grabbing a dominant market share almost overnight. "The conclusion is obvious," he told TIME shortly afterward. "Our system has terrific momentum...