Diet Coke
Diet Coke, also known as Coca-Cola Light, is a sugar-free replacement for Coca-Cola. The product was introduced in the United States in July 1982, and was the first new brand since 1886 to use the Coca-Cola wave trademark. The product quickly overtook Tab, Coca-Cola's saccharine-sweetened product, in sales. Unlike Tab, Diet Coke is sweetened with aspartame.
According to the company's UK website as of 2004:
- Diet Coke is the third-largest brand at the company, and the fourth most-popular carbonated soft drink in the world;
- Diet Coke is sold in 149 countries; in 46 of them, where diet has undesirable connotations, it is known as Coca-Cola Light;
- The top five markets for the brand are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and Brazil.
Diet Coke does not utilize a modified form of the Coca-Cola recipe. It is instead an entirely different formula. The controversial New Coke introduced in 1985 used a version of the Diet Coke recipe that contained sugar and had a slightly different balance of ingredients.
Seeing that Coca-Cola's rival Pepsi was being successful with its sugar-free brand Diet Pepsi, Coca-Cola decided to launch a new sugar-free brand under the Coca-Cola name to compete with Diet Pepsi. With the well-known name, it could be marketed more extensively than the more anonymously dubbed Tab.
Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi have capitalized on the markets of people who require low calorie regimens, such as diabetics and people with other health conditions, athletes, and people who want to lose weight.
