PepsiCo's own 10-K names The Coca-Cola Company as its primary beverage competitor and says that in 2025 the two held about 16% and 20% of the US liquid refreshment beverage category by estimated retail sales in measured channels, according to IRI.
Monster Beverage is a partner: Coca-Cola owned 21% of Monster at 31 December 2025, and Coca-Cola bottlers distribute Monster Energy in designated territories. Coca-Cola also held stakes of 18% to 28% in several large bottlers.
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What they fight on
Coca-Cola lists pricing, advertising, promotions, in-store displays, digitalmarketing, productinnovation, packaging and dispensing equipment, and contracts with venues such as theatres and arenas.
What changed in 2025-26
PepsiCo buys into prebiotic soda
On 19 May 2025 PepsiCo acquired poppi, a prebiotic soda brand, for $1.95 billion in cash plus contingent payments of up to $300 million: a direct move into the better-for-you sodas growing beside classic colas.
Keurig Dr Pepper plans a split
On 25 August 2025 Keurig Dr Pepper announced plans to acquire JDE Peet’s and then separate its beverage and coffee businesses into two listed companies; its 2025 10-K says the split will follow the acquisition.
A new chief executive at Coca-Cola
In December 2025 Coca-Cola’s board elected Henrique Braun, previously chief operating officer, to become chief executive on 31 March 2026.
AI changes how drinks are discovered
Coca-Cola’s 2025 10-K says the growing use of data analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital platforms is reshaping how consumers discover and engage with brands, and lists AI among the marketing capabilities it must keep building.
Coca-Cola's named competitors (10-K for 2025)
PepsiCo
Where they overlapSodas, water, sports drinks, juices
Note"A primary competitor" in many countries; 2025 net revenue $93,925 million
Keurig Dr Pepper
Where they overlapFlavoured soft drinks, coffee
Note2025 net sales $16,603 million; plans to split in two
Where they overlapEnergy drinks and other non-alcoholic drinks
NoteNamed as significant competitors
AB InBev, Kirin, Heineken, Diageo
Where they overlapAlcohol ready-to-drink beverages
NoteCoca-Cola sells alcohol drinks in many markets
What it means for you
For investors: compare Coca-Cola with PepsiCo's beverage business, not all of PepsiCo, which also earns from snacks and food.
For brand builders: the threats now come from categories (energy, prebiotic soda, functional drinks), not just colas.
For operators: note how Coca-Cola mixes competition and ownership, with stakes in Monster and its bottlers.
For marketers: track how drinks show up in retailer search and AI shopping assistants, which Coca-Cola flags as a shift in discovery.
Check older competitor lists: Dr Pepper Snapple Group combined with Keurig in July 2018, so lists showing both as separate rivals are out of date.
The Business Engineer lens
Drinks competition is moving from shelf space to discovery, where retail media, data and AI shopping tools decide which brand a shopper sees first. The Business Engineer view is to map rivals by the layer they control, from bottling and distribution to the digital front door.
PepsiCo. Coca-Cola's 10-K names it as a primary competitor in many of its countries, and PepsiCo names Coca-Cola as its own primary beverage competitor.
Monster is a partner more than a rival: Coca-Cola owned 21% of Monster at the end of 2025 and earns fees from distributing its drinks.
How big is Coca-Cola compared with PepsiCo?
In 2025 Coca-Cola reported net operating revenues of $47,941 million and PepsiCo net revenue of $93,925 million, which includes PepsiCo's large food business.
The complete explainer, cleaned up and reformatted for mobile.
Correction (11 Oct 2026): an earlier section on this page, “Coca-Cola Competitors in the AI Era”, made unsourced claims and predictions; it has been removed.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi compete in several categories, including soda beverages, health and energy drinks, bottled water, and juices. The rivalry between these two companies has been labeled the Cola Wars, characterized by mutually targeted marketing campaigns and several public and protracted legal battles.
Red Bull
Red Bull is an energy drink manufactured by Red Bull GmbH, an Austrian company founded in 1987 by Dietrich Mateschitz and Chaleo Yoovidhya.
Despite a somewhat limited product portfolio, Red Bull has a significant following in North America, Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia.
This following is the result of targeted marketing campaigns aimed at young men where the drink is associated with extreme sports such as mountain biking, parkour, Formula 1 racing, NASCAR racing, freestyle motocross, and air racing.
Keurig Dr Pepper is an American conglomerate selling beverages such as coffee, hot cocoa, tea, water, fruit juice, and mixers.
While the company does not enjoy the global reach of Coca-Cola, it does have a diverse product range allowing it to cater to a large audience in the North American market. Some of the most popular products under the Keurig Dr Pepper umbrella include RC Cola, Schweppes, 7 Up, Snapple β as explored in the interface layer wars reshaping consumer tech β , and of course Dr Pepper itself.
Furthermore, the Swiss giant owns a range of tea and other beverage brands including Nestea, Milo, Sweet Leaf Tea, and Peace Iced Tea.
Key takeaways:
The Coca-Cola Company is one of the most recognizable and valuable brands in the world, operating in all but two of the world’s countries. PepsiCo is arguably the company’s largest competitor because of its comparable global reach and a more diversified product portfolio.
In the energy drink market, Red Bull enjoys a large following with its clever and targeted marketing campaigns. Intense competition in North American resulted in Coca-Cola announcing plans to stop selling its energy drinks there.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
The Business Engineer readcompetitive analysis!the framework to look at the business landscape with a non-linear approach!Read on businessengineer.ai β
