How Pepsi once owned a naval fleet

On April 9, 1990, American newspapers reported on an unusual deal. Pepsi had come to a three billion dollar agreement with the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union had long traded Stolichnaya vodka in return for Pepsi concentrate. But this time, Pepsi got 17 submarines, a frigate, a cruiser, and a destroyer in 1989 to keep soda flowing into its citizens’ mouths.

With all this firepower, Pepsi indirectly became the sixth largest naval fleet in the world. Their reign didn’t last long, though.

Rather than using the newly acquired fleet (made up of obsolete vessels) to take their epic war with Coca-Cola from the shelves to the seas, Pepsi sold it off as scrap metal. A year later, Pepsi arranged the “Deal of the Century,” where the USSR would build Pepsi 10 oil tankers to pay for three billion dollars’ worth of Pepsi.

Unfortunately for Pepsi, the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 made it a lot harder for the capitalist soda giant to conduct business in Russia. Pepsi struggled to make new business deals with the new Republics in town