Coca-Cola reigns supreme, but there's a new number 2: Dr. Pepper, which has overtaken Pepsi as America's second-most popular fizzy fix. The Wall Street Journal registers it as a "tie" but the chart speaks for itself, tracing an ongoing decline in Pepsi's popularity and the inexorable rise not only of the good doctor but Sprite too.
Dr Pepper's steady rise is attributed to "novel flavors" and "Tik Tok" but has been brewing for many years. Pepsi, on the other hand, is just as famous for marketing mishaps, such as nearly starting a civil war in the Philippines, a rebranding effort that reads like the instruction manual for a perpetual motion machine, and that ad where Kylie Jenner solves America's racial divisions by giving a Pepsi to a cop.
