Which beverage company owns a trademark for the contour bottle shape?

The Coca-Cola Company owns the trademark for the distinctive contour bottle shape.

The bottle was developed after Coca-Cola asked suppliers to create packaging recognizable by touch, even in the dark, and distinguishable from competing soda bottles. In 1915, the Root Glass Company team, including designer Earl R. Dean and plant superintendent Alexander Samuelsson, created the design. Its curves were reportedly inspired by an imagined coca leaf or kola nut, although later retellings often connect the shape to a cocoa pod or a hoop-skirt silhouette.

A revised version was patented in 1923, and the contour bottle became standard Coca-Cola packaging by about 1920. The design’s unusual shape made the product identifiable even when its paper label was missing or damaged. The bottle was also nicknamed the “hobble-skirt” bottle because of its resemblance to a fashionable skirt style of the period.

The key legal distinction is between the original design patent and later trademark protection. Coca-Cola first protected the bottle through design patents, then secured trademark recognition for the shape in the United States in 1960. Pepsi, RC Cola, and Dr Pepper sell beverages, but they do not own Coca-Cola’s contour-bottle trademark.