I

cannot say I am a regular drinker of Coca-Cola. But, on a hot summer afternoon, even for me, there is sometimes nothing like cold Coke — especially if I can have it with ice, as I find the drink a little too sweet on its own: “Delicious! Refreshing! Exhilarating! Invigorating!” as one of its earliest advertising slogans from the 1880s went.

Coca-Cola is arguably the best-known American export. For some, such as the youth of the Soviet Union, it was the symbol of freedom. For others, such as the left in India, it symbolised what is wrong with America — consumerism and, worse, commercial manipulation of consumer taste. In 1977, in a highly symbolic move, the Indian government cancelled the licence for a Coca-Cola factory when it refused to go into a joint venture with a local company (equally symbolically, Coca-Cola came back to India in 1993, soon after the country’s economic liberalisation).