For its relaunch to succeed, Coca-Cola first has to reposition itself so that people stop feeling guilty when they drink it, or, ideally, come to see a Coke as a treat. That’s why Douglas is so intent on pushing Coca-Cola away from the supersize drinks and back to the older, smaller sizes. A few years ago the company renegotiated its bottler contracts to charge them based on total revenue rather than sales volume. In 2009 it started experimenting with smaller package sizes, offering a 7.5-ounce minican that had fewer than 100 calories and retailed for an average of 50¢. The larger traditional can sells for 35¢ when it comes in packs, but soda is priced so low anyway that the per-ounce increase doesn’t seem to put many people off. “We’ve done a bunch of studies on this, and we’ve found that even if this stuff were free, only 11 percent of people say they’ll drink more of it,” says Ali Dibadj, a beverage analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein. The minicans have seen strong growth, even at places such as Walmart. In theory, if Coca-Cola sells enough of them, it could make a lot more money by giving people a lot less to drink.

Douglas points to the minicans and glass bottles as proof that “we don’t need gluttony to grow.” But for all their adorableness, the petite containers are never going to replace the jumbo sizes in the grocery aisle, or the 50-ounce Double-Gulps at 7-Eleven. Regular cans and 2-liter bottles still account for 75 percent of Coca-Cola’s soda sales in the U.S., and Douglas says that number won’t change drastically anytime soon. “It’s complicated,” he says. “You’ve got lots of history, lots of habits, and lots of retailers who think that all that matters is a 12-pack or a 2-liter price.”

A former Coca-Cola employee, who declined to be identified because he didn’t want to anger his old employer, says the company has a hard time getting restaurant and convenience store chains to reduce their sizes because they make so much money off them.Excerpted from ‘Coke confronts its big fat problem’ – in Businessweek dated Aug 2014