Did Raymond Loewy really design the Coca Cola bottle?
The Encyclopaedia Britannica says so, and Loewy’s own web site says so, but, no he didn’t. The Coca Cola bottle was designed (and patented, thus leaving no doubt as to the date) in 1915 by the Root Glass Co. of Terre Haute, Indiana. Oddly enough, one of the fellows who really did design the bottle (T. Clyde Edwards ) based it on a drawing of a cocoa (not coca or cola) bean pod drawing in a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which nowadays incorrectly credits Loewy, as this web page at Indiana State University relates.Coca Cola themselves verify this story, and they own the original prototype. Loewy was no doubt a genius and designed a great number of important and distinctive industrial products, including Coca-Cola vending machines, and he he did at one time comment that the Coke bottle was a brilliant design, but he didn’t design THE Coke bottle, as in 1915 he was either still in school in France or serving in the French Army. Loewy didn’t emigrate to the USA until 1919. Also see
