@Bushmanpat I worked for Coca-Cola's Australian bottling arm, Coca-Cola-Amatil (or CCA) which used to have the ASX ticker code CCL - but was taken over two years ago (in 2021) by a larger European Coca-Cola Bottling company called Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP). See Here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-16/coca-cola-amatil-sale-to-europe-shareholder-vote/100071594

I can tell you that TCCC (The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, NYSE:KO) operate all over the world, but mostly through franchise and licensing arangements, meaning most of the bottlers are not owned outright by TCCC, but TCCC usually owns a percentage of their shares, regardless of whether they are a public or private company. TCCC usually maintain between 20 and 40% ownership of their partner bottlers (as they did with Coca-Cola Amatil here in Australia) so they can have representation on the Boards of those companies and also block any takeovers by parties that they don't want to take over those companies. TCCC are also the main supplier of raw ingredients to those partner bottlers all over the world, and it's a condition of maintaining a licence to mix, bottle and sell Coca-Cola products that you buy the main ingredients from TCCC. There are exceptions, such as sugar and water, which are usually both sourced locally. In Australia they use refined sugar made from Queensland sugar cane, because it's cost effective. In the USA they use high fructose corn syrup because that industry is subsidised by the US Government and it is much cheaper to buy than cane sugar or any other sugars.

The way TCCC control their secret recipe is that they sell pre-packed ingredients labelled Ingredient Mix A, B, C, etc. which are sourced from their 100%-owned ingredients factories in different parts of the world, and each ingredients factory only supplies a limited number of ingredients in their mix, and while there are people within those factories that will know the ingredients and the ratios of those ingredients, they only have part of the picture, because they don't know what is in the ingredient mixes produced by the other factories. And at the bottling level, we know that Coke has water, sugar, caramel and phosphoric acid in it, but beyond that we would be mostly guessing. You'll see that the ingredients listed on the bottles and cans is purposefully vague, which they can get away with when the ingredients are not allergens and don't contain allergens.

Pepsi have a fairly identical system themselves, and outside of Australia they do rival Coke for market share in many parts of the world.

Coke have had more success with developing countries however, probably because they have a larger advertising budget and they are willing to invest a lot of money into fridges (drink chillers) and coolers, which they will lease to shops at no cost as long as they ONLY stock Coca-Cola products in that cooler or fridge. If other manufacturers drinks are found in them, Coke will take them away because they own them. Coke do this everywhere - including Australia, and another condition is that none of the Coca-Cola products advertised on the chillers/fridges (including Mt Franklin and Pump water plus Powerade here in Australia) can be covered up or blocked from view by anything else, so Coke supply the chillers/fridges, the shop pays for the power, and Coke controls what is allowed in the chiller/fridge, and what advertising is on the inside and outside of it. Coke have a division who just look after those fridges, chillers, and vending machines, and they do drive the business.

For some reason, when Coke was introduced to PNG the local people soon started regarding it almost as their national drink, or so I hear from people who have worked over there. There is one country where Coke have consistently failed to become the number one selling beverage, and that is Scotland - where their Irn-Bru (pronouced "Iron Brew") always outsells Coca-Cola. In Australia Coke was the best selling non-alcoholic beverage in every capital city in Australia except Adelaide - because for some reason Adelaidians bought more Farmers' Union Iced Coffee than Coke. That's why Coca-Cola Amatil created Barista Bros Coffee here in Australia, to try to go head-to-head with Farmers' Union. It didn't work, and they recently stopped manufacturing Barista Bros and have deleted it from their range, so they're out of flavoured milk now.

Anyway, I'm going off on tangents now... Just wanted to let you know that the franchisee method has been around for decades with Coke, but they often like to get some ownership of those franchisees (like between 20% and 40%, often around 30%) so they can have some people on the inside keeping a close eye on them. They are then often referred to as partners rather than franchisees, but they still pay licensing fees to TCCC and they also have to buy ingredients from TCCC, so very much a franchise model.

There are also often bottlers who mop up other smaller bottlers to become larger and more relevant, as you have described, and as CCEP did with CCL (Coca-Cola Amatil) here in Australia two years ago. But the products still get made and sold, it's just the flow of profits that changes. In our case, all of the profits now flow out of Australia, as often ends up being the case I find. The company I work for now is half owned by Pepsico, and half owned by an Israeli-based company called Strauss Group. We make Hommus, Tzatziki and Dips for Australia and New Zealand.