The Coca-Cola Formula—The “best-kept trade secret in the world”?

The Coca-Cola Company—incorporated in 1892, and whose brand is now worth a staggering $80bn—relies heavily on an aspect of intellectual property known as Trade Secret.

The procedures for protecting the formula for Coca‐Cola (a.k.a. "Merchandise 7X") are as follows: The written version of the secret formula is kept in a security vault at the Trust Company Bank in Atlanta, and that vault can only be opened by a resolution from the Company's Board of Directors. It is the Company's policy that only two persons in the Company shall know the formula at any one time, and that only those persons may oversee the actual preparation of Merchandise 7X.

The Company refuses to allow the identity of those persons to be disclosed or to allow those persons to fly on the same airplane at the same time.

The same precautions are taken regarding the secret formulae of the company's other cola drinks‐ diet Coke, caffeine‐free diet Coke, TAB, caffeine‐free TAB and caffeine‐free Coca‐Cola.

Lesson: As Intellectual Property(IP) has become the new oil, every business should jealously protect and exploit its IP assets. No company can truly grow and thrive without them.