7 strategies Coca-Cola used to become one of the world's most recognizable brands

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Coca-Cola went from a cocaine-infused elixir in 1886 to a ubiquitous sugary drink by 1929.

Now people in more than 200 countries drink 1.9 billion servings every day, according to The Coca-Cola Company.

Having a product people enjoy is far from the only thing needed to become one of the world's most valuable companies. Coca-Cola used seven key design and marketing strategies, which made it as recognizable in the streets of Shanghai as in its hometown of Atlanta by the 1920s, says Coca-Cola VP of innovation and entrepreneurship David Butler.

In his book, "Design to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too)," Butler and co-author Linda Tischler explore these seven strategies, which we've explained below.

1. It started with a unique, market-tested formula.

After serving as a Confederate colonel in the Civil War, John Pemberton wanted to develop a version of the coca wines (basically cola with alcohol and cocaine) that were in vogue at the time. In 1886, Atlanta passed prohibition laws that forced beverage manufacturers to produce non-alcoholic versions of their drinks.

Pemberton sent his nephew Lewis Newman with samples of his formulas to a local pharmacy where people congregated to drink these early versions of sodas. Newman relayed feedback to his uncle about the various concoctions, and by the end of the year Pemberton had a recipe that was unique and tailored to customers' tastes. The original recipe is still locked in a vault in Atlanta.

Cocaine was removed from Coke in 1903. Other minor adjustments have been made in the past century or so, but beyond the "New Coke" disaster of 1985, the recipe has largely remained unchanged. This decision helped the company scale, Butler writes, since it did not spend time trying to tailor the taste to regional markets throughout the world.

2. Its logo uses a timeless font.

Pemberton's bookkeeper, Frank Mason Robinson, decided that Coca-Cola's logo should be written in the Spencerian script, which accountants used, because it would differentiate it from its competitors. The company standardized the logo in 1923 and, like the recipe, decided that while packaging could adjust to the times, the core logo was to be untouched.

It's resulted in a logo that has had more than 100 years to become imprinted in the minds of people around the world.

3. It was distributed in a proprietary bottle.

After the Georgia businessman Asa Griggs Candler became the majority shareholder of Coca-Cola in 1888, he set his sights on making Coke the nation's most popular cola through marketing and partnerships with regional bottlers.

By 1915, Candler was losing market share to hundreds of competitors. He launched a national contest for a new bottle design that would signal to consumers that Coke was a premium product that couldn't be confused with some other brown cola in an identical clear glass bottle.

The new bottle had to be able to be mass produced using existing equipment yet also be distinct.

The Root Glass Company in Indiana decided to enter the contest and base its design off the product's name. While combing through the dictionary for the word "coca" and words like it, Butler writes, mold shop supervisor Earl R. Dean came across an illustration for the cocoa plant that caught his attention. Coca-Cola had nothing to do with cocoa, but the cocoa pod had a strange but appealing shape. He and his team got to work and were declared the contest winners the next year.

Coca-Cola commissioned the bottle design as a piece of defensive marketing, but began promoting the shape as much as the logo and product. Even after plastic replaced glass as the standard means of drinking Coke in countries like the US, the company continued to promote the image of the Coke bottle as an icon.