Two Centenarians: Iraq’s First Coke Bottler Shares a Birth Year With the Coca-Cola Bottle
“Soon you will see the bottle which brings enjoyment the
world over!”, heralded a series of 1950 Baghdad newspaper ads. Most of the ads featured
the famous Coke bottle as a centerpiece to drum up interest and demand while
announcing that “Delicious and Refreshing
Naim Dangoor (left) and Ahmed Safwat in Nice, France in the 1940s.
Bringing the world-famous
The pair
was finally able to get their operation off the ground in the summer of 1950.
The original contour bottles they filled were embossed with the
Ironically, Naim Dangoor is – like the iconic Coke bottle – a centenarian, born 100 years ago in Baghdad. His son, David, shared some scanned versions of his father’s detailed business plans from the era that he came across while cleaning up. While we know that Coke cost a nickel in the United States for over 70 years, the documents give a glimpse of how the initial retail price of Coke bottles in Iraq was determined.
“He was trying to work out what is the optimum
price to sell
Naim Dangoor suggested the price of 14 Fils for a bottle of Coke.
While the
“You can see that he was very methodical about deciding what the price should be,” his son David remarked while sharing hand-drawn analyses of pricing versus costs of goods, advertising, rent, property taxes, wages, coolers, cases, bottles and ingredients.
Perhaps the elder Dangoor was so methodical because of his studies in engineering at London University. In the 1930s, he made the five-day journey from Baghdad to London on his own to enroll in the university at the age of 17. After graduating, he returned to his native Iraq, where he would eventually form Eastern Industries Ltd. with his business partner, Ahmed Safwat, a fellow Iraqi and London University graduate.
Naim Dangoor celebrates his 100th birthday amongst family and friends.
After a few successful real estate and manufacturing ventures,
they decided to apply for the Coke bottling franchise in Iraq.
Naim Dangoor, who happens to be Jewish, and Ahmed Safwat, who happened to be Muslim, met at a military training in Iraq, and “they immediately hit it off and decided they had to go into business together,” David recalled.
As we studied a late 1940s black and white photo of his
father and Mr. Safwat, David said, “In my heart,
At 100 years old, Naim Dangoor is still devoted increasingly to
charitable work with a focus on education in London, where he’s lived since the
mid-1960s. He also continued working in real estate, and his four sons followed
him in the business.