Coca-Cola executives legally locked themselves into selling their flagship glass bottle of soda for exactly five cents from 1886 all the way until 1959.

A closer look

Coca-Cola executives legally locked themselves into selling their flagship glass bottle of soda for exactly five cents from 1886 all the way until 1959. This ridiculous 70-year price freeze happened because the company president signed a deeply flawed, perpetual contract in 1899 selling the bottling rights at a fixed price, forcing the company to blanket the nation with nickel advertising just to stop independent bottlers from raising prices and killing demand. They even went so far as begging the US Treasury to mint a 7.5-cent coin to subtly raise the price without breaking single-coin vending machines. It is a brilliant masterclass in how one poorly read legal document signed by an arrogant Victorian businessman can force a multi-billion dollar global conglomerate into seven decades of pure stubborn agony