Pepsi clawed its way back to the No. 3 spot among America's top soda brands by sales volume in 2025, reclaiming ground it lost after a bruising two-year slide, the Daily Mail reported, citing Beverage Digest's annual sales report released this week.
The 127-year-old brand had been knocked out of second place by Dr Pepper in 2023, then overtaken by Sprite in 2024, dropping all the way to fourth. Its partial rebound comes as Coca-Cola, still the dominant player in a $100 billion US soda industry, posted a 5.3 percent decline in sales last year. Total volumes across the entire American beverage market fell 0.9 percent over the same period.
The numbers tell a tight story. Dr Pepper held second place with 8.8 percent of all carbonated soda sales in 2025. Pepsi followed at 8.1 percent. Diet Coke came in fourth at 8 percent, Sprite slid to fifth at 7.9 percent, and Mountain Dew rounded out the top tier at 5.7 percent. Coca-Cola Classic still commanded 18.5 percent market share, but the gap between the brands chasing it has never been thinner.
Coca-Cola's slump was partly attributed to a backlash among Hispanic consumers following what the Daily Mail described as a "viral hoax" on TikTok. Users on the platform claimed the company fired thousands of Latino workers at a Texas bottling plant and reported them to ICE. The claim was labeled a hoax, but its spread appears to have done real damage to Coke's sales figures.
That episode is a useful reminder of how fast misinformation can move, and how real the consequences are when it lands on a consumer brand. Whether or not Coca-Cola bears any fault for the hoax itself, the company now owns the fallout in its annual numbers.
Coca-Cola has been making aggressive moves elsewhere to shore up its position. The company recently launched a restaurant advertising blitz across multiple chains as consumer spending has softened. It also snatched the supply contract at Marriott, a deal covering roughly 9,700 hotels in 143 countries, including 6,200 in the United States, away from Pepsi. And in 2025, Coke grabbed a major contract from Pepsi at Costco as well.
Pepsi has not been sitting still. The brand won back the drinks contract at Subway in 2024, covering more than 20,000 US locations. Pepsi also pointed out that when its full family of products is counted, including Diet Pepsi and other variants, the Pepsi brand remains the overall No. 2 soda in America.
That kind of accounting matters in boardrooms, but on the shelf, the individual brand rankings tell a different story. And the shelf is where consumers vote with their wallets.
The battle for restaurant and retail contracts has become a second front in the soda wars. Marriott, Costco, and Subway represent enormous volume. Winning or losing a single account can move the needle on national sales figures. The fact that Coke and Pepsi are trading these contracts back and forth suggests neither company has a lock on institutional buyers, and that price, terms, and brand perception are all in play.
Pepsi's broader corporate challenges extend beyond the fountain. PepsiCo's recent snack pricing miscalculation showed what happens when a company pushes consumers too far on price, a lesson that applies just as well to the beverage aisle.
One of the strongest performers in the 2025 rankings was Diet Coke, which climbed into fourth place. Launched in 1982 as America's first major sugar-free cola, the brand has been a steady presence for decades. Its upward move this year reflects a broader consumer shift toward lower-calorie options, a trend that has been building for years.
This is not a new phenomenon. Newsmax reported that Diet Coke first surpassed Pepsi-Cola to become the second-most popular soft drink in the country back in 2010, when Coca-Cola sold nearly 927 million cases of Diet Coke compared with Pepsi's 892 million. At that time, Coca-Cola's US soda sales fell 0.5 percent while PepsiCo's dropped 2.6 percent, a steeper decline that foreshadowed the competitive pressure Pepsi faces today.
Sprite, meanwhile, slid two spots in the rankings after a strong 2024. Created by Coca-Cola in 1961, the lemon-lime brand had briefly leapfrogged Pepsi, but its 7.9 percent market share in 2025 put it behind both Pepsi and Diet Coke.
The bigger picture is less cheerful for the entire carbonated soda category. Total beverage market volumes fell 0.9 percent last year, and the growth is happening elsewhere. Energy drinks surged 9 percent in volume over the same period. Monster was described as a big winner in that category, while Gatorade fell.
That shift matters. Younger consumers are migrating toward energy drinks, flavored waters, and functional beverages. The traditional cola giants are fighting over a pie that is slowly shrinking. Coca-Cola's leadership changes and 2026 strategy updates suggest the company recognizes the challenge, but recognition and execution are two different things.
Dr Pepper, for its part, has been the quiet winner of the last three years. First introduced in the 1880s, predating Coca-Cola, which debuted in an Atlanta pharmacy in 1886, Dr Pepper has carved out a strong second-place position with 8.8 percent of carbonated soda sales. It knocked Pepsi from second in 2023 and has held that ground since.
The American soda market is a $100 billion industry, and the reshuffling at the top of the rankings reflects real changes in consumer behavior. Hispanic consumers responding to social media hoaxes. Health-conscious buyers choosing diet options. Younger drinkers abandoning cola for energy drinks. Institutional buyers like Marriott and Costco swinging contracts based on price and brand strength.
None of this happens in a vacuum. Consumer brands live and die by trust, trust in the product, trust in the price, and trust in the company behind it. When major packaged-goods companies face consumer backlash, the market response is swift and measurable.
Pepsi's return to third place is a modest recovery, not a triumph. The brand that once nearly toppled Coke during the 1980s Cola Wars, the scrappy challenger that put Cindy Crawford in a 1992 Super Bowl ad and recently featured Doja Cat, still sits well behind Dr Pepper and far behind Coca-Cola Classic. Its sales were flat even as it climbed the rankings, meaning it rose partly because others fell.
Coca-Cola's 5.3 percent sales decline is the more consequential number. When the market leader stumbles, the whole category feels it. And when the stumble is driven in part by a viral hoax that the company could not get ahead of, it raises fair questions about institutional preparedness in an age of social media-driven consumer movements.
In a free market, consumers get the final word. Right now, they are telling the soda giants that loyalty is earned every quarter, and no brand, no matter how old or how dominant, gets to coast.