Korang tahu tak yang coca cola ni wlupun dijual lebih 1.8 billion sehari, ia tidaklah sebenarnya dijual diseluruh tempat didunia.
Baca berita penuh dari BBC kat bawah ni..
After
almost 60 years, Coca-Cola is on sale again in Burma. It's one of the
world's most recognised brands, so are there any countries where the
drinks giant still remains unsold?
Coca-Cola says it sells 1.8 billion servings of the drink every day. But for the last six decades, none has been in Burma.
That's because of US trade sanctions on the military junta which ruled the country from 1962 to 2011.
Those sanctions were suspended a few months ago, as the country began to move towards democratic reforms.
But the company said on Monday its first delivery had arrived and local production would begin soon.
Coca-Cola's entry into any country is a powerful symbol, says Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses.
"The moment Coca-Cola starts shipping is the moment you can
say there might be real change going on here," he says. "Coca-Cola is
the nearest thing to capitalism in a bottle."
Coca-Cola's rival PepsiCo has also
announced plans to resume sales in Burma.
There are now just two countries in the world
where Coca-Cola cannot be bought or sold - at least, not officially.
They are Cuba and North Korea, which are both under long-term US trade
embargoes (Cuba since 1962 and North Korea since 1950).
Cuba was actually one of the first three countries outside the US to bottle Coke, in 1906.
But the company moved out as Fidel Castro's government began seizing private assets in the 1960s, and has never returned.
In North Korea - the other Coca-Cola-free zone -
recent media reports suggested it was being sold in a restaurant
in Pyongyang. But Coca-Cola says if any drinks are being sold in either
North Korea or Cuba, they are being smuggled in on the black market,
not via official channels.
The dark fizzy soda was created in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia.
From the early days the Coca-Cola company looked to expand worldwide,
and by the early 1900s it was bottling the drink in Asia and Europe.
But the big boost came as a result of World War II when Coca-Cola was provided to US troops overseas.
There were more than 60 military bottling plants for
Coca-Cola around the world during the war, and locals got a taste for
the drink too.
It became powerfully associated with American patriotism,
says Standage, and was seen as so crucial to the war effort that it was
exempted from sugar rationing.
Dwight Eisenhower, at the time the supreme commander of
Allied forces in Europe, was said to be a particular fan and he ensured
its availability in North Africa.
He also introduced the drink to top Soviet general, Georgy
Zhukov, who asked if a special, colourless version - one that looked
like vodka - could be made, and Coca-Cola duly obliged for a while, says
Standage.
These days Coca-Cola is
regularly ranked as one of the top, if not the top, global brands.
Coca-Cola in Burma, pre-embargo
"It has always been about the American dream," says Bruce
Webster, an independent branding consultant who has done work for the
Coca-Cola company in the past.
But not all countries have embraced the American-ness that seems to be embodied by Coca-Cola.
It was the French who first coined the pejorative term
"coca-colonisation" in the 1950s. Trucks were overturned and bottles
smashed, says Standage, as protesters saw the drink as a threat to
French society.
During the Cold War, Coca-Cola became a symbol of capitalism and a faultline between capitalism and communism, says Webster.
It was not marketed in the former Soviet Union due to the
fear that profits would go straight into communist government coffers,
says Standage.
Pepsi filled the gap and was widely sold.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, many East Germans bought
Coca-Cola by the crate-load, says Standage. "Drinking Coca-Cola became a
symbol of freedom."
Other than the former Soviet Union, the main region that
Coca-Cola has struggled in historically is the Middle East, largely due
to a boycott implemented by the Arab League from 1968-1991, as a
punishment for it selling in Israel.
Pepsi picked up a lot of the sales in the Middle East - and many local versions of the drink thrived.
Coca-Cola is not trying to get involved in politics, says
Webster, but as a huge brand so closely associated with the US, it
sometimes finds itself tangled up in politics, or singled out for
criticism.
"The whole strength of the brand is plugging into a way of
life that so many people wanted. As an ideology, it polarises. And
sometimes those associations become unattractive," he says.
"America itself as a brand is more tarnished now. People are more ambiguous towards it."
In 2003, protesters in Thailand poured Coca-Cola onto the
streets as a demonstration against the US-led invasion of Iraq, and
sales were temporarily suspended, says Standage.
Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has
threatened to ban Coca-Cola and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez
recently urged people to drink locally-made fruit juice rather than drink Coca-Cola or Pepsi.
But 126 years after its birth, Coca-Cola is still pushing forward in terms of sales,
with strong growth - especially, it says, in the emerging markets of India, China and Brazil.
Reporting by Cordelia Hebblethwaite
PS: Ingat ler ia dijual kat seluruh dunia.. Rupanya tidak.. hehehe~
