The 130-year-old soft drink brand has been a mainstay of the global top 10 by brand value since the BrandZ report was launched in 2006 and it was placed third after Microsoft and GE.
But it was soon overtaken by the likes of Google and by last year had slid down to 8th place, albeit its brand value continued to grow year by year, as the chart below demonstrates.
Millward Brown’s BrandZ valuation process takes the financial value created by a brand in US dollars and multiplies it by the proportion of that value generated by the brand contribution alone. That brand contribution is derived from consumer research that quantifies how much of the volume people purchase and how much of the price premium people pay can be attributed to brand equity.
This year the value of the Coca-Cola brand fell for the first time in the survey's history, by 4% to $80.3bn, amid growing public awareness of the risks to health from the sugar content of soft drinks and despite respectable growth in the Coca-Cola Company's share price.
It has sunk to 13th place in the 2016 rankings, which, in an irony which Coca-Cola executives will not appreciate, is one below tobacco brand Marlboro.
Other brands which have climbed above Coke in the past year include Facebook, Amazon, McDonald's and Chinese tech company Tencent.
Coca-Cola did not respond to a request for comment. However, the company appears to have already taken action which could help the brand regroup. In January this year it ditched the different brand personalities for Coca-Cola Life, Coca-Cola Zero and Diet/Light Coke and unleashed a global campaign in which the brands were marketed as Coca-Cola variants.
See below for a chart comparing the brand values of Coca-Cola and Google, this year's most valuable global brand, over the years since the first BrandZ report, and a rundown of the brands above Coca-Cola.
The brands above Coca-Cola
1. Google: $229.2bn, up 32%
2. Apple: $228.5bn, down 8%
3. Microsoft: $121.8bn, up 5%
4. AT&T: $107.4bn, up 20%
5. Facebook: $102.6bn, up 44%
6. Visa: $100.8bn, up 10%
7. Amazon: $99bn, up 59%
8. Verizon: $93.2bn, up 8%
9. McDonald's: $88.7bn, up 9%
10. IBM: $86.2bn, down 8%
11. Tencent: $84.9bn, up 11%
12. Marlboro: $84.1bn, up 5%
13. Coca-Cola: $80.3bn, down 4%
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