But on the other side of the Atlantic, World War II proved a market blessing. The company convinced the American military that Coca-Cola was an essential morale booster. As a result, drinks for G.I.'s were exempted from sugar rationing. Company men, decked out in military drab, flew overseas to install bottling plants behind the lines.

Then there was Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the Russian war hero. When Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced Coke to Zhukov, the Russian liked it. But he also knew how Stalin would react if one of his generals was seen drinking an American imperialist symbol. The folks at Coke were as accommodating as could be. A chemist removed the soda's caramel color, and they put the drink in a clear bottle with a white cap and red star. First shipment of White Coke: 50 cases.

The Coca-Cola Company is hardly the only enterprise to see world events through the prism of profits, of course. But the company's size, age and prominence give the practice impressive sweep. In World War II, Coke was an American imperialist symbol, a kosher food, a fake Communist beverage and the drink of Hitler Youth. Most people thought the war was about good, evil, competing ideologies and so on, but for Coca-Cola the issue was simpler: more Coke or less Coke.

Similarly, when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the Coca-Cola people were there. They were passing out free six-packs.

Of course, no company, not even Coca-Cola, can carry out such an agenda by itself. It needs consumers, people like Marshal Zhukov, who want to drink Coke as much as the company wants to sell it. People like the World War II soldier who wrote home that "the most important question in amphibious landings" is "whether the Coke machine goes ashore in the first or second wave." Or like the crowds in Warsaw last year, who cheered wildly as the first Polish Coca-Cola truck arrived.