CocaCola

What does it take to become a millionaire investor? You could bet everything on one stock and pray that it works out well. Or you could build a diversified portfolio that includes both reliable stocks and riskier, more growth-oriented choices. The second option is likely to be the best one for most investors.

And, if you go that route, you’ll want to consider beverage king Coca-Cola (KO 1.02%) as you look to build a seven-figure nest egg.

What does Coca-Cola do?

Coca-Cola is one of the largest consumer staples companies on the planet, with a market capitalization of around $280 billion. The company’s namesake brand is iconic and well known in countries around the world, though it is really just one of the many beverage products Coca-Cola sells.

From a big-picture perspective, the products Coca-Cola produces are really luxury items. You could just drink free tap water instead of paying far more for a soda. However, the cost of a soda, or any of the other branded beverages the company sells, is modest. So, in effect, Coca-Cola is selling an affordable luxury that most people are loath to give up even during hard times, like recessions.

Thus, Coca-Cola’s business tends to be very resilient. That’s highlighted by its status as a Dividend King, with more than 60 years’ worth of annual dividend increases backing its roughly 3.1% dividend yield. Without getting into details, Coca-Cola stands toe to toe with any consumer staples company when it comes to the strength of its business.

It can be a reliable foundation for a diversified millionaire-making portfolio. It allows you to stack higher-growth, riskier investments on top of it without having to fear that you will lose it all by taking on too many risky bets.

Why buy Coca-Cola now?

Coca-Cola is a well-run company and it doesn’t go on sale very often. When it does get put on the discount rack, the sale is usually pretty modest. Don’t go into a valuation analysis here expecting to find a deep discount. But that doesn’t mean there is no discount.

For starters, Coca-Cola’s 3.1% dividend yield is quite attractive on a comparative basis. One vital reference point is the skinny 1.2% yield of the S&P 500 index. But the yield is also well above the 2.7% average yield for the consumer staples sector as a whole. On a relative basis, Coca-Cola’s dividend yield suggests it is trading at an attractive price for long-term investors.

That fact is backed up by more traditional valuation metrics. For example, Coca-Cola’s price-to-sales ratio is currently around 6.1 versus a five-year average of roughly 6.3. That’s not a huge discount, per se, but it is cheaper than normal. The price-to-earnings ratio shows the same trend, with the current figure at about 23.5 compared to a five-year average of nearly 27. A fair to slightly discounted price for a company like Coca-Cola is a pretty good long-term investment opportunity.

Build your million-dollar portfolio from the ground up

Coca-Cola isn’t likely to get you to millionaire status all by itself. And even if it did, the process would likely require decades to play out. However, you probably shouldn’t be buying a single stock and hoping to hit it rich. You should spread your bets out, with some more risky ones and some more conservative ones, like Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola isn’t an exciting growth stock. Coca-Cola isn’t a dirt cheap turnaround story. It is a boring company that can be expected to grow slowly and steadily over time while spitting out a reliable and growing dividend. And that is the foundation on which you can build out a much more interesting millionaire-making portfolio.

There’s a strong argument that no other brand is as recognizable worldwide as Coca-Cola (KO 0.12%). There are very few places you can go in the world and not find Coca-Cola’s products. This vast distribution and brand recognition are largely why Coca-Cola has been a beverage powerhouse for decades.

The beverage giant has also been a staple in many portfolios for decades, bringing some stability and attractive income to the table. If you’re interested in adding this blue-chip stock to your portfolio, here are five things you should know beforehand.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Coca-Cola is still a prime dividend stock

The first thing to know about Coca-Cola’s stock has to do with its main appeal: its reliable, above-average dividend. The current quarterly dividend is $0.51, with an average yield of around 2.9%, just below its 3% average for the past decade.

This yield is more than double the S&P 500 average, which is great, but the long-term attraction is the consistency with which Coca-Cola increases its annual dividend. When it announced it would increase its quarterly dividend to $0.51 ($2.04 annually) in February, this marked the company’s 63rd consecutive year of increases, making it a Dividend King. The dividend has doubled since 2012.

KO Dividend Yield data by YCharts

2. Coca-Cola has offset stagnant volume with pricing power

When your brand moat is as strong as Coca-Cola’s, it gives you pricing power that lesser-established brands typically don’t have. This is a great thing for Coca-Cola because its volume has been flat to slightly down in recent times.

The second quarter (Q2) is a key example of Coca-Cola’s pricing power at work. Although its global unit case volume declined by 1% year over year, its organic revenue (revenue that excludes currency swings and acquisitions/divestitures) increased by 5% year over year.

Coca-Cola uses a metric called price/mix, which tells you how much more money it’s making by either raising prices or selling more profitable products instead of just selling more products overall. In the second quarter, this price/mix was 6%, which is illustrated by the difference in volume decline and revenue growth.

3. Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is leading growth for Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s flagship Coca-Cola soda will likely always be its bread and butter, but recent changes in consumer preferences have brought a new growth beverage to the light. Coca-Cola Zero Sugar — which, as the name implies, is a sugar-free alternative to the Classic Coke — is Coca-Cola’s fastest-growing brand.

In Q2, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar volume grew 14% year over year. Below is how other specific beverages and categories performed in the quarter:

Source: Coca-Cola’s second quarter results.

It’s important to note that Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is a specific drink that falls in the “Trademark Coca-Cola” subcategory that also includes Coca-Cola Classic, Diet Coke, and other regional-specific Coke variants (like Coca-Cola Sin Azúcar in Latin America).

4. Coca-Cola continues to have industry-leading margins

Unlike its main competitor, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola only sells beverages. Its main business model is selling concentrates and syrups to its bottling partners, who then produce the products and distribute them themselves.

This slimmed-down operation has helped Coca-Cola operate with industry-leading margins because it doesn’t have to indulge in the food business, which can be capital-intensive and much less profitable. Here is how Coca-Cola’s various margins compare to PepsiCo:

KO Gross Profit Margin (Quarterly) data by YCharts

5. Coca-Cola isn’t afraid to adjust its portfolio

Despite how successful a lot of Coca-Cola’s brands are, the company continues to reshape its portfolio to adjust to what consumers want, both adding what works and removing what doesn’t work. At one point, Coca-Cola’s portfolio consisted of over 400 brands. Today, it consists of around 200.

It has adapted to consumers leaning toward sugar-free options, the growth of plant-based beverages, and the popular alcohol ready-to-drink segment. The latter is especially noteworthy because Coca-Cola had traditionally steered clear of the alcohol segment, but began making attempts to become a total beverage company.

This willingness to adapt is important when you’re investing in a company like Coca-Cola for the long term. It also explains how the company has maintained its market-leading position for so long.

There are few countries in the world where Coca-Cola isn’t the most popular soft drink. But in Peru, that position is held by Inca Kola – an almost 100-year-old beverage deeply embedded in the national identity.

The yellow soda – meant to evoke the grandeur of the ancient Inca Empire and its reverence for gold – was the creation of Joseph Robinson Lindley. The British immigrant had set out from the coal mining town of Doncaster, England, for Peru in 1910 and soon after set up a drinks factory in a working-class district of the capital, Lima.

He started producing small-batch carbonated fruit drinks and gradually expanded. When Inca Kola was created in 1935, with its secret recipe of 13 herbs and aromatics, it was just a year ahead of Coca-Cola’s arrival in the country. Recognising the threat posed by the soft drink giant, which had launched in the US in 1886 and made inroads across Latin America, Lindley invested in the budding television advertising industry to promote Inca Kola.

Advertisement campaigns featuring Inca Kola bottles with their vaguely Indigenous motifs and slogans like “the flavour that unites us” appealed to Peru’s multiethnic society – and to its Inca roots.

It fostered a sense of national pride, explains Andres Macara-Chvili, a marketing professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. “Inca Kola was one of the first brands in Peru that connected with a sense of Peruanidad, or what it means to be Peruvian. It spoke to Peruvians about what we are – diverse,” he says.

But it wasn’t only the drink’s appeal to Peruvian identity or its unique flavour (described by some as tasting like bubblegum, by others as being similar to chamomile tea) that enhanced brand awareness. Amid the turmoil of a world war, Inca Kola would also come to prominence for another reason.

Finding opportunity in a wartime boycott

At the tail end of the 1890s, Japan had sent roughly 18,000 contract labourers to Peru. Most went to the country’s budding coastal sugar and cotton plantations. Upon arriving, they found themselves subjected to low wages, exploitative work schedules, and unsanitary and overcrowded living conditions, which led to deadly outbreaks of dysentery and typhus. Unable to afford passage back to Japan after they’d completed their four-year contracts, many of the Japanese labourers remained in Peru – moving to urban centres where they opened businesses, notably bodegas, or small grocery stores.

Denied access to loans from Peruvian banks, as their community grew in number and economic standing, they established their own savings and credit cooperatives.

“Among their community, money began to circulate, and with it they raised the capital to open small businesses,” explains Alejandro Valdez Tamashiro, a researcher of Japanese migration to Peru.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese community emerged as a formidable merchant class. But with that came animosity.

By the mid-1930s, anti-Japanese sentiment had begun to fester. Nationalist politicians and xenophobic media accused the community of running a monopoly on the Peruvian economy, and, in the build-up to World War II, of espionage.

By the start of that war in 1939, Peru was home to the second-largest Japanese community in Latin America. The following year, one incident of racially motivated attacks and lootings against the community resulted in at least 10 deaths, six million dollars in damage and loss of property for more than 600 Japanese families.

Since its release, Inca Kola had been widely sold in the mainly Japanese-owned bodegas.

With the outbreak of war, its competitor, Coca-Cola, received a huge boost internationally. The US firm, which for years had used political connections to expand overseas, became a de facto envoy of US foreign policy, burnishing its image as a symbol of democracy and freedom.

The soda giant obtained lucrative military contracts guaranteeing that 95 percent of soft drinks stocked on US military bases were Coca-Cola products, essentially placing Coke at the centre of the US war effort. Coke featured in wartime posters while war photographers captured soldiers drinking from the glass bottles.

Back in Peru, in the wake of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Coca-Cola halted distribution of its soda to Peru’s Japanese merchants, whose bodegas were by now one of the main suppliers of the US carbonated drink.

Recognising a brass tacks opportunity to boost sales, the Lindley family – already outselling a fledgling Coca-Cola domestically – doubled down as the main soft drink supplier to the spurned community. With Japanese-owned bodegas forming a sizeable distribution network across Lima, Inca Kola quickly stepped in to fill the shelf space left empty by Coca-Cola’s exit.

The wartime shift gave Inca Kola an even stronger foothold in the market and laid the groundwork for a lasting sense of loyalty between the Japanese-Peruvian community and the Inca Kola brand.

Hostility towards the community intensified during the war. Throughout the early 1940s, a deeply US-allied Peruvian government hosted a US military base along its coast, broke off diplomatic relations with Japan, shuttered Japanese institutions and initiated a government deportation programme against Japanese Peruvians.

Despite this, today more than 300,000 Peruvians claim Japanese ancestry, and the community’s imprint can be seen in many sectors, including in the country’s Asian-Peruvian fusion eateries, where Inca Kola is a mainstay on menus.

Taking on a giant – and then joining forces

Inca Kola would go on to narrowly outcompete Coca-Cola for decades. But by the late 1990s, the company was mired in debt after a decades-long effort to contain its main rival.

Following heavy losses, in 1999, the Lindleys sold a 50 percent stake of their company to Coca-Cola for an estimated $200m.

“You were the soft drink that went toe-to-toe with this giant international corporation, and then you sold out. At the time, it was unforgivable,” reflects Macara-Chvili. “Today, those feelings are not so intense. It’s in the past.”

Still, Coca-Cola, in recognising the soft drink’s regional value, allowed the Lindley Corporation to maintain domestic ownership of the brand and to retain bottling and distribution rights within Peru, where Inca Kola continues to connect with local identity. Unable to beat the brand outright, Coca-Cola sought a deal that allowed it to corner a market without displacing a local favourite.

Sitting outside a grocery store with two friends in Lima’s historic centre, Josel Luis Huamani, a 35-year-old tattoo artist, pours a large glass bottle of the golden soda into three cups.

“We’re just so accustomed to the flavour. We’ve been drinking it our whole lives,” he says.

“It’s tradition, just like the Inca,” declares 45-year-old food vendor Maria Sanchez over a late lunch of beef tripe stew at a lunch counter not far from Lima’s main square.

Dining with family and friends in the highland jungle region of Chanchamayo, Tsinaki Samaniego, 24, a member of the Ashaninka Indigenous group, sips the soft drink with her meal and says, “It’s like an old friend.”

This article is part of ‘Ordinary items, extraordinary stories’, a series about the surprising stories behind well-known items.

Read more from the series:

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July 17 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has announced that Coca-Cola has agreed to use cane sugar in its iconic drink instead of high-fructose corn syrup, though the Atlanta-based conglomerate has yet to confirm the move.

Trump, a known heavy consumer of Diet Coke, made the announcement on his Truth Social media platform on Wednesday.

“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” he said. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

High-fructose corn syrup is used as a sweetener in Coca-Cola in the United States. The move to cane sugar would align the U.S. product with Coca-Cola sold in other countries, including Mexico.

Coca-Cola has not confirmed that it is adopting cane sugar for its U.S. drinks.

In a statement, the company said: “We appreciate President Trump’s enthusiasm for our iconic Coca-Cola brand. More details on new innovative offerings within our Coca-Cola product range will be shared soon.”

Beverage giant declines to either confirm or deny change to ingredients in its signature soft drink.

United States President Donald Trump has announced that Coca-Cola will start using cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup in its US-made soft drink at his urging.

“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday.

“I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola.”

Trump said the switch would be a “very good move”, adding: “You’ll see. It’s just better!”

Coca-Cola neither confirmed nor denied Trump’s announcement, but said it appreciated the president’s “enthusiasm for our iconic Coca-Cola brand.”

“More details on new innovative offerings within our Coca-Cola product range will be shared soon,” the Atlanta, Georgia-based company said in a brief statement.

“I have been speaking to @CocaCola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!” –President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/9L27oxlYUj

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 16, 2025

Trump, who is known for his love of Diet Coke, did not explain his push to change the soft drink’s ingredients, but his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has harshly criticised the prevalence of high-fructose corn syrup in the American diet.

Kennedy, who has pledged to wage war on ultra-processed foods containing ingredients rarely found in kitchen cabinets, has called the sweetener “just a formula for making you obese and diabetic.”

High-fructose corn syrup, which is derived from corn starch, is favoured by many US manufacturers because it is cheaper than sugar, in part due to government subsidies for corn and tariffs on sugar imports.

Coca-Cola began using high-fructose corn syrup in its US production in the 1980s, but still uses cane sugar in many versions of its signature beverage made overseas, including Mexico, whose version of the drink has developed a cult-like following for its supposedly superior taste.

While Americans’ high sugar intake is a major contributor to nearly three-quarters of the population being overweight or obese, there is currently no scientific consensus to suggest high-fructose corn syrup is less healthy than cane sugar or other sweeteners.

In a 2018 fact sheet, the US Food and Drug Administration said it was “not aware of any evidence” of a “difference in safety” between foods containing high-fructose corn syrup and those with other sweeteners such as sugar and honey.

President Donald Trump says Coca-Cola has agreed to use real cane sugar in its drinks sold in the US.

Coca-Cola uses corn syrup in its American products, but Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has voiced concern about the ingredient’s health impacts.

“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” Trump wrote on social media. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola.”

Without explicitly confirming the recipe tweak, a Coca-Cola spokesperson said they “appreciate President Trump’s enthusiasm” and “more details on new innovative offerings within our Coca-Cola product range will be shared soon”.

Trump said in Wednesday’s post on Truth Social: “This will be a very good move by them – You’ll see. It’s just better!”

While Coke sold in the US is typically sweetened with corn syrup, Coke in other countries, such as Mexico and the UK, tends to use cane sugar.

In April, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey told investors that “we continue to make progress on sugar reduction in our beverages”.

Mr Quincey said the company has “done this by changing recipes as well as by using our global marketing resources and distribution network to boost awareness of and interest in our ever-expanding portfolio”.

Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement have advocated for American companies to remove ingredients such as corn syrup, seed oils and artificial dyes from their products, linking them to a litany of health problems.

He has been critical of the amount of sugar Americans consume and reportedly plans to update nationwide dietary guidelines this summer.

Trump is a regular drinker of Diet Coke – which uses the artificial sweetener aspartame. He had a button installed in the Oval Office’s Resolute desk so he can be served the soda.