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Food · The cola wars · Take No. 012

Coke or Pepsi?

Pepsi wins the blind taste test. Coke wins everything else. A hundred-year war that's really about whether you trust your tongue or your memory.

The case for each side, then the verdict. Then the floor is yours.
The case for

Coca-Cola

Atlanta · 1886

  • 1886First poured in Atlanta. Pepsi arrived seven years later as, essentially, the response.
  • No. 1Best-selling soft drink in the world, in almost every market, for a century.
  • 1985New Coke: the company changed the recipe, the public revolted, and it came back in 79 days. No brand has ever been loved like that.
vs
The case for

Pepsi-Cola

New Bern, North Carolina · 1893

  • 1975The Pepsi Challenge: in blind sip tests, more people picked Pepsi. Coke's own research found the same.
  • +Sweeter and more citrusy, which is why it wins a single sip and divides a whole can.
  • MJMichael Jackson, Beyoncé, Messi: Pepsi has had the better ads for forty years and everybody knows it.

Cast your take

——
The verdict

It's Coke. A sip is not a drink.

Pepsi's best weapon is real: in a blind sip, it wins, and that's been reproduced for fifty years. If you only ever drank one mouthful, this would go the other way.

But nobody drinks one mouthful. Over a full glass Pepsi's sweetness turns, and Coke's sharper, drier finish is what you reach for the second time. Add the fact that Coke is what 'cola' tastes like in the world's collective memory, and the verdict's easy. Coke.

Disagree? That's what the buttons are for.

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