The Root Glass Company
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The Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana was one of Coca-Cola's bottle suppliers. It was Earl R. Dean, Root Glass Company's bottle designer, who designed the famous contour Coca-Cola bottle. In the mid 1930's Chapman J. Root, the company's president, sold the Root Glass Company to Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Dean went on to work in other Midwestern glass factories.
The Root family then began investing in Coca-Cola Bottling plants - acquiring properties in Indiana, Florida, upstate New York, New Jersey and The Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company. In the late 1960s the company went public - being traded on the NASDAQ as Associated Coca-Cola. While not the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the world, with its flavor lines and other soft drink franchises (Dr. Pepper and Canada Dry were marketed in some of its franchises) it was possibly the largest soft drink bottler in the world.
Associated was sold to the Coca-Cola company in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Its territories were resold to other independent bottlers.
