Bloody Bottles

Cola wars in Thailand

The global sales competition between Coke and Pepsi has produced some of the catchiest tunes in advertising, as well as a lot of intricate high-level maneuvering in Washington, where the winner was sometimes determined by who sat in the Oval Office. PepsiCo Chairman Donald Kendall got the right to bottle and sell Pepsi in the Soviet Union in 1972, when his friend Richard Nixon was in the White House. After Jimmy Carter moved to Washington, his old Atlanta pal Coca-Cola Chairman J. Paul Austin captured the exclusive right to sell Coke to a billion Chinese. Rarely, though, has...