The Early Coca-Cola Imitators: The War on Rip-Offs

By 1891, when Asa G. Candler bought the rights to Coca-Cola, the drink was already a runaway success. But that success invited a massive wave of Coca-Cola rip-offs looking to cash in on the “coca” craze. From blatant name-swaps like Koke and Coke-Ola to literal “clones” like Afri-Kola, the soda market was flooded with imitators. In fact, by 1916, Coca-Cola had already fought and won a staggering 153 cases of trademark infringement to keep its brand from being swallowed by a sea of “Kolas.”

The Many Early Coca-Cola Rip-Offs

Those early cases of trademark infringement I mentioned in the intro were really just the tip of the iceberg! Some estimates suggest there were as many as 7,000 different Coca-Cola rip-offs trying to siphon off Coke’s success.

Soft drink makers everywhere were jumping on the coca leaf bandwagon, desperately trying to catch the lightning Pemberton had bottled. Since they couldn’t use the name “Coca-Cola,” they had to be content with blatant imitators like:

Believe it or not, there was even one called Koke! Have a Koke and a smile! As well as such blatant rip-offs as Coke Ola and Coca-Kola. Just imagine that. One case, against the Koke Company of America, went all the way to the Supreme Court. There was another called Afri-Kola. It’s easy to guess the reason for that name. Afri-Kola bottles used a diamond-shaped label that was extremely similar to Coca-Cola’s own label of the time. This was not the same drink that sells today out of Germany, called Afri-Cola, with a C.

Most of these Coca-Cola imitators didn’t make any specific therapeutic claims. They were  simply refreshing, invigorating, healthful, exhilarating, and, of course, delicious.

Forget the Cocaine, Match the Bottle!

While the name was being copied in print, the real battle was happening in the coolers. When Coca-Cola first began bottling on a small scale in 1894, there was no standard container. This lack of a “visual identity” made it incredibly easy for thousands of imitators to flood the market with look-alike products that fooled even the most loyal drinkers.

The hurdles Coca-Cola faced in stopping these “knock-offs” included:

• Generic Glass: Early bottles were plain, straight-sided, and undistinguished. Since any bottler could buy them, they offered zero brand protection.
• The “Cooler Problem”: Customers usually reached into dark, ice-cold water to grab a soda. Without a unique shape, they couldn’t tell a real Coke from an imitation by feel.
• Label Forgery: Since the bottles were identical, imitators only had to copy the diamond-shaped label. If the colors and fonts were “close enough,” a customer might never notice the difference.
• Decentralized Bottling: Because different regional bottlers used slightly different glass, there was no “official” look for a consumer to trust.

A Note on the Early Consumer Experience: It’s important to remember that in these early days, bottling was a brand-new frontier. Not everyone was an “old hat” at drinking soda from a bottle! Because of this, it wasn’t just a matter of loyal fans accidentally grabbing a Koke or a Coke-Ola because they only glanced at the diamond-shaped label in a dark cooler. It was entirely possible for a first-time drinker to grab an imitator, enjoy it, and keep buying that same imitator for years—never realizing they weren’t actually drinking “the real thing.”

The “Real Thing” wasn’t just a slogan—it was a warning: When Coca-Cola eventually began using the famous “The Real Thing” messaging, it wasn’t just about brand superiority. It was a literal plea for consumers to be careful. The company was trying to broadcast a message that many people hadn’t realized yet: if you aren’t paying close attention to the bottle and the source, you might be drinking a fake without even knowing it. Without addressing this and fighting fiercely against imitators, Coca-Cola may have failed to become the iconic beverage it is today.

There were many legal battles over this unfair competition but the solution, in the end, was to design and patent a standard and unique Coca-Cola bottle, making it illegal for competitors to imitate it.

🍾 The Birth of the Iconic “Contour” Bottle

By 1915, Coca-Cola’s lead attorney, Harold Hirsch, had seen enough. He realized that as long as Coke was in a straight-sided bottle, the company would be playing “whack-a-mole” with imitators forever. He launched a design competition among eight glass companies with a legendary and seemingly impossible brief:

“Create a bottle so distinct that you could recognize it by feel in the dark or even if it lay broken on the ground.”

The winner was the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, but their iconic design was actually a “fruitful” mistake. The design team, led by Alexander Samuelson and Earl Dean, went to the local library to find images of the coca leaf or the kola nut for inspiration.

They couldn’t find any good illustrations, but they did find a picture of a cocoa pod in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mistaking the cocoa plant for an ingredient in the soda, they mimicked its vertical ribs and bulging middle.

A Shape That Couldn’t Be Copied

This “hobbleskirt” design (named after the tight-waisted fashion of the time) was patented in 1915. It solved the “Cooler Problem” instantly. For the first time, a consumer reaching into a dark, icy box didn’t need to see a label to know they had “the real thing”, the bottle itself told the story.

This became the ultimate weapon in the war against the 7,000 imitators. While a competitor could easily print a diamond-shaped label, they couldn’t legally manufacture a bottle with those trademarked curves.

⚖️ The “Cola” Monopoly Battle

Even so, the company sometimes went a bit far in its anti-competition battles, going after companies using “cola” in their name, including, of course, Pepsi Cola, but this was not considered derivative enough and the case was lost. They didn’t just want to stop blatant imitators like “Koke” they wanted to stop Pepsi-Cola.

Do do so, they argued that the word “Cola” was a fanciful word they invented to put in the name of their product. The courts eventually ruled against them, stating that “Cola” was a generic descriptive term for the flavor (from the Kola nut), and therefore, anyone could use it.

🥤 The Battle Beyond the Courtroom While Coca-Cola was busy suing Pepsi over its name, a much bigger fight was brewing: The Taste Test. Does Pepsi actually win the “Sip Test” because it’s sweeter, or is the “Coke Side of Life” unbeatable?

Read the CulinaryLore Breakdown: Did Pepsi Really Beat Coke in Taste Tests?

Other cases, however, like that against the brand “Koke” were won. That was a battle that dragged on for years until the US Supreme Court decided that Koke was a fraud and could no longer be sold.

However, Coke’s success went right on happening, and while the early wave of imitators was eventually crushed by the courts and the iconic contour bottle by the mid-1920s, it was far from the end of the story. The legal battles to protect ‘The Real Thing’ simply shifted from stopping local ‘Koke’ knock-offs to defending the brand on a global stage.

Further Reading

• Cocaine in Coca-Cola: The 1886 Tonic to Refreshment History
• Drugs in Other Early Soft-Drinks Besides Coca-Cola
• Did People Actually Like New Coke Better?
• Devil Shake: Why Pepsi’s Rival to Yoo-Hoo Ultimately Failed