Shanghai Bottling History

Before I begin to share stories and photographs from the Coca-Cola pavillion at the Shanghai EXPO, I wanted to give a brief overview of the history of Coca-Cola in Shanghai.  The product was first bottled in Shanghai in 1927 by the Watson Mineral Water Company.  They were a strong bottler and sales rose quickly.  In fact Shanghai became to first city outside the US to order 10,000 gallons of syrup in a year during the 1930s.  The bottling truck fleet above was state of the art in 1936.

While World War II halted sales, The Watson Mineral Water Company quickly resumed after the War and in 1947, Shanghai became the first city outside the US to top 1 million cases sold.  Sales ceases when the Peoples Republic of China was proclaimed in the fall of 1949, but were resumed after Coca-Cola re-entered China in 1979.  The beautiful 1938 poster printed and used in Singapore was featured for many years at the first World of Coca-Cola.