HBO Films has put in development The Color of Cola, based on Stephanie Capparell’s nonfiction book The Real Pepsi Challenge, an account of how Pepsi broke racial barriers in 1940s America.

Mitchell Kapner (Oz the Great and Powerful) will pen the film adaptation. The logline: In 1947, Pepsi CEO Walter Mack hired National Urban League staffer Edward F. Boyd to do something no major American company had done before: assemble an all-black national sales team to focus on the overlooked African-American market. Boyd and his team increased Pepsi’s sales around the country, while facing the racism of the Jim Crow South and its more insidious expression in the corporate halls of the North.

Mark Landsman, Michael Karbelnikoff and Peter Kline executive produce.

Capparell, a journalist, author and filmmaker, also is co-author of the international bestseller Shackleton’s Way and an editor and writer for The Wall Street Journal.