Soda Drinks: Big Business

Between 1899 and 1970, the yearly national consumption of soft drinks rose from 227 million to 72 billion eight-ounce servings. Bottling plants used new mechanized production lines to produce far greater quantities of soda and transported their products on motorized trucks riding along newly paved roads. Manufacturers realized very early the value of advertising, first in newspapers and then on the radio. While regionally distributed sodas boomed (many of them fruit flavors like orange, grape, and cherry), the most phenomenal growth occurred in the cola sector. By 1920 cola drinks had overtaken ginger ale as the most popular flavor. Ten years later, over seven thousand bottling plants were producing 6 billion bottles of soda a year.