Old Coke bottle sells for $110,700

It's one of the real originals, a modified prototype of the curvaceous form that has become a pop culture icon. There are only three prototypes of the contour bottle known to survive, and this is the only one that is completely intact with nary a scratch, chip or any signs of wear whatsoever to mar its handsome green surface.

It was born in 1915 when the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Atlanta sought to differentiate itself from its competitors by replacing the plain, straight-sided bottles everyone used with “new bottle, a distinctive package” that would make Coke instantly recognizable. Once divorced from the drug store soda fountain counter, the beverage’s success in bottled form had spawned many imitators. Coca-Cola first tried to beat off the copycats with a distinctive diamond-shaped label in 1906, but because many stores kept their soda bottles in big buckets of ice, the paper labels often slipped off.

The 1,000 bottling plants franchised to produce Coca-Cola at that time were required to emboss their bottles with the famous cursive lettering trademark created by Frank M. Robinson, partner and bookeeper of Atlanta pharmacist Dr. John S. Pemberton who invented the soft drink in 1886. The problem was that as recognizable as the Coca-Cola lettering was, imitators were shameless about copying it for their sodas. Brands like Koka-Nola, Murphy’s Coca-Cola, Mo-Cola and Koke, either straight-up stole the script or modified it ever so slightly the public to dupe the public.

Coca-Cola launched a contest among the eight or 10 large glass works that supplied its current bottles to create a new design. Benjamin Thomas, co-founder of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company and developer of its worldwide bottling system, wrote that their mission was to create a “bottle so distinct that you would recognize if by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground.” The proposed designs were to be sent to the bottling company headquarters in Atlanta along with a prototype bottle. Eleven bottles were submitted.

A committee of Coca-Cola bottlers and lawyers assembled in Atlanta in August of 1915 to pick the winning design. The bottle designed by staff machinist Earl R. Dean at the Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, was the clear winner. He and his co-worker Clyde Edwards had been sent by shop foreman Alexander Samuelson to the public library to research the coca plant and kola nut, in the hope their shapes would provide inspiration. They didn’t. Instead, they came across an image of the curved, ribbed cocoa pod. Dean quickly drew up a sketch for  a contoured, fluted bottle and within hours a few samples were created.

Moral of the story: keep pawing through those trash piles.  There's treasure within!