Salvador Dali - Poetry of America (1948) aka Cosmic Athletes

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

In Poetry of America, aka Cosmic Athletes, Savador Dali, explores “American culture, consumerism, and racial tensions through dreamlike imagery, featuring American football players, a giant Coca-Cola bottle, and a map of Africa” (Figuerez Ortiz, 2015). 

This surrealist masterpiece was created during World War II when the artist was exiled in the United States. The Coca-Cola bottle depicted in Poetry of America is the first recorded instance of the iconic bottle in art. Below, an image of the painting with an image of the Coca-Cola bottle detail. 

  

Note

*Poesia de America. Los atletas cósmicos.

References

- Dali, S. (1948). Poetry of America. Oil on canvas. Permanent Collection at the Dalí Theatre-Museum (Teatro-Museo Dalí), in Figueres, Spain. 

- Figueres Ortiz, Pau (March 8, 2015). Salvador Dali - Poetry of America (1943). Blog: The Revolution will be sponsored.

https://larevolucionserapatrocinada.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/salvador-dali-poetry-of-america-1943/

Robert Rauschenberg - Coca-Cola Plan (1958)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The Coca-Cola Plan is part of Rauschenberg’s “Combines” series (1954-64), where he not only blurred the lines between sculpture and painting, but also incorporated everyday objects into art, elevating and transforming them into artistic statements. According to the Robert  Rauschenger Foundation, the artist “sought to act in the 'gap' between art and life, valuing chance and collaboration across disciplines.” 

The Coca-Cola Plan is a vertical trophy-sized wall piece, comprising a  narrow rectangular wood frame, with three levels. The top level is covered with brown paper and the “PLAN” in writing. The middle level, open in the back, houses three vintage green glass Coca-Cola bottles. One of the bottles is dripping with thick oil paint in red and orange. Another bottle has a smear of brown and blue-green paint, and the center bottle has no paint. The third level, closed in the back, has a large round carved newel staircase cap. Two metal wings are attached on each side of the wooden frame, at the middle level. 

The Coca-Cola Plan is a piece among others in the "Combines" series that is credited with “forever changing the course of American Abstract Expressionism”, removing intense emotions, to engage with everyday life and objects. 

References
Rauschenberg, R.  (1958) Coca-Cola Plan – Pencil on paper, oil on three Coca-Cola bottles, wood newel cap, and cast metal wings on wood structure. Permanent Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA. 
https://www.moca.org/collection/work/coca-cola-plan 

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation 

https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/foundation 

Andy Warhol - Green Coca-Cola bottles (1962)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

According to the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City, where Andy Warhol's famous Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962) are located:

"Andy Warhol’s Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962) is a defining Pop Art piece representing mass consumerism, conformity, and democratic access to consumer goods. Using silkscreen printing, the painting features 112 identical, bright green Coke bottles on a white background, highlighting the ubiquity and standardization of American culture".

According to Andy Warhol:  

“What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” (Warhol, 1975)

References
-Warhol, A. (1975). The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. New York, NY: Harcourt Publishing Company.  
-Warhol, A. (1962). Green Coca Cola Bottles. Painting, acrylic, screenprint, and graphite pencil on canvas. The Whitney Museum. Of American Art, New York, NY. 
https://whitney.org/collection/works/3253 

Oh, patents! The lightweight PET Coca-Cola bottle

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

In an effort to address the global plastic pollution crisis*, The Coco-Cola Company has been steadily producing lighter PET**plastic bottles (Coca-Cola, 2024). The lighter bottles have new shapes allowing to produce the bottles using less plastic, while still guaranteeing beverage quality. Thus, over the course of 10 years, Coca-Cola bottles have steadily decreased weight, from 27 grams to a breakthrough 18.5 gram bottle, rolled out in 2024, for Coca-Cola soft drinks (Coke, Fanta and Sprite), in both the United States and Canada.

The reduced weight of the bottles has a significant impact. The unused plastic amounts to 800 million bottles less each year. Additionally, production of the lightweight bottle reduces the carbon footprint of bottle manufacturing by an amount equivalent to removing 17,000 cars off the road. Thus, the lightweight PET soft drink bottle is consistent with the goals that The Coca-Coca Company has set forth for a World without Waste.

The ornamental properties of the lightweight bottles, or the way the bottles look, are patented designs. For example, the US design patents USD760084S1, USD792229S1 and USD796332S1, all three titled Bottle,  respectively, correspond to the Coke, Fanta and Sprite lightweight bottle designs. However, the patent Figures (see below) for the three bottle designs each have broken lines at the base, indicating that the design patents do not cover the base of the bottles. Indeed, the base of the bottles is petaloid, which is an invention in its own right that allows gas to expand within the bottles, without stress-cracking the bottles, and by the same token enables the bottles to remain level and upright on a shelf. Thus, the petaloid base of the bottles is covered, for example, by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) utility patent WO2016019318A1, titled Lightweight base for carbonated beverage packaging. A patent that is part of a large family of patents, covering the petaloid base of the lightweight bottles. 

Below, the patent Figures for three of the lightweight bottle designs, excluding coverage of the base. The three patent Figures are shown above an image of the marketed lightweight PET bottles for Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Sprite soft drinks. 

USD796332S1

USD760084S1

USD792229S1

                   

Note
*Each year more than 400 million tons of plastic are produced. In the USA, only an estimated 27% of plastic is recycled. Worldwide, 10% of plastic is recycled. As a result, approximately 2000 trucks of plastic are dumped into the ocean every day.  Thus, Each year 19 to 23 million tons of plastic leak into aquatic systems, polluting rivers, lakes and oceans (UNEP, 2025). 

** PET = polyethylene terephthalate

References
UNEP (July 1, 2025). Plastic Pollution. UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
https://www.unep.org/plastic-pollution
Coca-Cola (March 28, 2024). Coca-Cola North America Debuts New Lightweight PET Bottle Designs. The Coca-Cola Company website. 
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/coca-cola-north-america-debuts-new-lightweight-pet-bottle-designs

Oh, patents! Tracking the universal refPET Coca-Coca bottle

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Launched in 2018 in Brazil, the universal, re-usable plastic Coca-Cola bottle goes beyond recycling. This Coca-Cola bottle is called "universal" because it is both a multiple-brand and multiple-use (vs. single-use) product. In Brazil, the universal bottle is a 1L RefPET* (one-liter, refillable polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottle, that is re-usable across soft drink brands (e.g., Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta and Fresca) up to 25 times, before it is recycled**. 

Thus, the universal bottle enters a circular economy, with consumers using the small deposit fee on the RefPet bottle to reduce the price of a new purchase, each time a REfPet bottle is returned. The returned RefPet bottles are then sent to a processing facility that washes, sanitizes, refills, and relabels the ReftPet bottles before distributing them anew. 

However, for the reuse system to work—for bottles to be retired at the right time, when damaged or no longer serviceable—the life cycle, or the number of times the bottles are refilled, has to be tracked. The following patent recites a QR code invention designed to remedy the difficulties of traditional inventory tracking on labels or with two-dimensional codes. Indeed, labels are changed with each universal reuse, and some labels peel off, even before the bottles are processed for reuse. Likewise, the RefPet bottle-sterilization process tends to eventually make bottles hazy, and thus erases any two-dimensional codes printed on the bottles.  

The invention recited in the US utility patent US12269646B2, titled Systems and methods for tracking refillable packages filled at a bottling facility, comprises a radio-frequency identification tag (RFID), laser-engraved on the bottle, a radio frequency identification reader, and a data processing system in communication with the reader to store and process the information extracted from the RFID tag. Thus, for each rPET bottle, the complete history of the bottle becomes available, in addition to other types of information that the manufacturer may want to track (e.g., origin, stress cracking, or even promotions, games and raffle codes). RFID information might also be combined with information from other technologies such as vending or drop-off machines, or those technologies detecting fill and pressure, at the processing centers. 

The extracted patent Figure 3 is shown below, together with a close-up image of an engraved QR Code, on a marketed RefPET universal bottle. The patent Figure 3 is a plan view of a refillable package 10, in this case a bottle 15, with an RFID tag 120 appearing on the bottle’s neck 35. The bottle comprises a base 20, with a rounded concave shape 50, a waist 25, a label panel 30, a mouth 40 and a closure 45. Three universal RefPET marketed bottles (empty, Coca-Cola and Fanta) are also included below.

Notes

* ReftPet or rPet

**Since the universal bottle was first introduced in Brazil, in 2018, the reusable model is estimated to replace 200 million single-use bottles, per year (PackingEurope, 2020; MacArthur, 2021). Success in Brazil prompted the reuse system to swiftly expand across Latin America to Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay (GS1, 2024). More recently, in 2024, the reusable system was rolled out in South Africa, where the universal bottle is a 2L rPET program (Coca-Cola Africa, 2023). Similar programs have also rolled out in Western Europe, in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Germany (Laird, 2020; Ross, 2023).

References

-Coca-Coca Africa (Feb. 9, 2023). Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa expands roll-out of 2L returnable PET bottles to reduce plastic waste in Free State and Northern Cape. Coca-Cola Beverages Africa. 

https://tinyurl.com/ysnp5cj9 

-GS1 (2024). Coca-Cola’s reusable, refillable bottles benefit from innovative QR Codes powered by GS1. GS1.

https://www.gs1.org/system/files/case-study-gs1-brazil-coca-cola.pdf

-Laird, K. (Sept. 8, 2020). Coca-Cola forges ahead with recycled PET bottle commitment in Western Europe.  Plastic News.

https://www.plasticsnews.com/news/coca-cola-forges-ahead-recycled-pet-bottle-commitment-western-europe/

-Ross, H. (Aug. 4, 2023). Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) Collaborates with Petainer to Develop 'Universal refPET Bottle'. Petainer. 

https://www.petainer.com/news/coca-cola-europacific-partners-ccep-collaborates-with-petainer-develop-universal-refpet-bottle

-MacArthur, E.  (Oct. 7, 2021). A reusable drinks bottle design for multiple brands: Universal Bottle. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. 

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-examples/a-reusable-drinks-bottle-design-for-multiple-brands-universal-bottle

-Packaging Europe (Feb. 11, 2020). Reuse: a closer look at Coca-Cola Brazil’s unique returnable bottle initiative. PackagingEurope.com 

https://packagingeurope.com/reuse-a-closer-look-at-coca-cola-brazils-unique-returnable-bottle-initiative/1583.article

Oh, patents! The Coca-Cola bottle (3)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

A third Coca-Cola bottle design patent, USD105529, titled Design for a bottle, was issued on August 3, 1937, to Eugene Kelly, a citizen of the United States, residing in Toronto, Canada, who then assigned the patent to The Coca-Cola Company, in Wilmington, Delaware.  This was the last design patent filed for Coca-Cola glass bottles, before the bottle was trademarked, in 1960, and therefore protected from use by others for as long as the trademark was renewed and fees paid. 

The 1937 Coca-Cola bottle design patent was issued upon expiration of the 1923 Christmas Day patent, in other words, exactly 14 years later. Experts have noted that the patent drawing for the 1937 bottle appears exaggerated, almost caricatured, presumably so that the design could appear different enough to be patentable (Lockhart & Porter, 2010). Thus, the 1937 design patent depicted the distinctive bottle contours as almost elliptical, to clearly differentiate the Coca-Cola bottle from any other bottle on the market. The patent design also depicted a space of interrupted contours, around the bottle, reserved for the Coca-Cola embossed logo, which is not shown, again to protect the secrecy of the design. 

Below, the extracted 1937 Coca-Cola bottle design patent, Figure 1, depicting a side view of the Coca-Cola bottle design. The patent drawing appears next to a Georgia Green marketed embodiment of the design, showing the embossed CocaCola logo and patent number D105529 in the reserved space. The location where the bottle was produced is embossed on the bottom. As also shown below in this case, the bottle was produced in Roanoke, Va.  

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References

The Coca-Cola Company: The History of the Coca-Cola Contour Bottle. The Coca-Cola Company website. 

https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/history/the-history-of-the-coca-cola-contour-bottle

Lockhart, B. and B. Porter (Sept- Oct., 2010). The dating game: Tracking the Hobble-Skirt Coca-Cola Bottle. Society for Historical Archeology. 

https://secure-sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/coca-cola.pdf 

Oh, patents! The Coca-Cola bottle (2)

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

A second Coca-Cola bottle design patent, USD63657, titled Design for a bottle, was awarded to Chapman J. Root, CEO of the Root Glass Company, on December 25, 1923. Because the patent was granted on Christmas Day, this slightly thinner Coca-Cola bottle design became known for a while as the “Christmas bottle”. 

As for the first Coca-Cola bottle design patent, depiction of the embossed Coca-Cola logo was omitted to protect the secrecy of the design. In the second patent, however, the space for embossing cuts the emblematic contouring. The bottle contours that could be “felt”, and that served to distinguish Coco-Cola bottles from all others. 

Below, the extracted patent Figure 1 showing a perspective view of the thinner Coca-Cola bottle design. The patent figure appears next to an image of a Georgia Green marketed embodiment of the design, showing the embossed logo and the patent date. This Christmas bottle was produced in Jackson, OH, per the embossed information, on the bottom of the bottle, also appearing below.  

Reference
The Coca-Cola Company: The History of the Coca-Cola Contour Bottle. The Coca-Cola Company website.
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/history/the-history-of-the-coca-cola-contour-bottle