Soft Drinks in the Modern World: Trends, Taste, and Consumer Choices

Soft drinks are no longer a simple cola story. In the last five years, the category has become a broader contest among legacy brands, reduced-sugar reformulations, functional products, retailer-owned lines, and tightening health and packaging regulation. Publicly accessible market evidence points to a sector that is still large and resilient: Euromonitor reported that the global soft drinks market reached USD 1.1 trillion in 2024, with total value sales up 21% between 2019 and 2024; yet global litre volume rose only 3% in 2024, showing that much of recent growth has been price- and mix-driven rather than purely consumption-led. The same source reported 7% growth in reduced-sugar carbonated soft drinks in 2024 and a decline in the top five suppliers’ combined retail-volume share from 29% to 26% between 2019 and 2024, indicating fragmentation and new room for affordable local brands and private labels.

Soft drinks now sit at the intersection of indulgence, affordability, and health signaling. Official category systems and label laws classify beverages by product type and composition, not by a general “nutritious” class, so the phrase works best as a descriptive editorial term for lower-sugar or functionally fortified options rather than as a regulatory claim. At the same time, “private label soft drinks” deserve dedicated treatment because retailer-owned brands are moving beyond cheap imitation toward strategic portfolios built on price gaps, ingredient simplification, sharper packaging, and retailer trust. This trend is visible in global NIQ data, in Europe’s unusually high private-label shares, and in case studies such as Carrefour, Walmart, Tesco, and Mercadona.

Definitions and Categories

In trade and market practice, “soft drinks” generally means non-alcoholic refreshment beverages spanning both carbonated and non-carbonated categories. The British Soft Drinks Association lists the main categories as carbonates, fruit juices, dilutables, still & juice drinks, bottled waters, and sports & energy drinks. In the U.S., the FDA separately regulates carbonated soft drinks and broader beverage labeling, while ingredient and sweetener rules cut across all beverage types. This matters because the category is commercially broad, but nutritionally heterogeneous: a bottled water, an energy drink, a regular cola, and a no-sugar cola may all sit inside “soft drinks” while carrying very different calorie, sweetener, and labeling profiles.

The diagram above reflects the category families used by industry bodies, while the lower branch shows how modern portfolio strategy increasingly overlays those families with sugar-reduction tiers. That overlay is now commercially important: in the UK, for example, low/no-calorie drinks made up 69.2% of the carbonates category in 2024, and globally reduced-sugar carbonated soft drinks grew faster than many legacy segments in 2024.

Market Size and Recent Trends

The most robust open public evidence over the last five years shows a market shaped by pandemic disruption, inflation, premiumization, and then a renewed push toward functionality and affordability. Open-access data are stronger on directional indicators than on one reconciled global annual revenue series, so the table below uses the best publicly available trend markers and marks unavailable details as unspecified.

These indicators imply three near-term trend lines that any serious article should foreground. First, value growth has recently outpaced volume growth, especially in mature markets, meaning inflation, premiumization, and mix have mattered as much as pure demand. Second, the category is being pulled simultaneously toward functional beverages and cheaper alternatives: Euromonitor reported 8% value growth for energy drinks and powder concentrates, 6% for sports drinks, and 7% for reduced-sugar carbonated soft drinks in 2024. Third, local brands and private labels are increasingly important because affordability is no longer a side issue; it is part of the core competitive structure.

A smaller but important structural trend is channel change. Euromonitor reported that global e-commerce penetration of carbonated drinks reached 5% in 2023, up from 4% in 2022, and that cola carbonates still account for more than half of global carbonates sales. This means the contemporary “cola wars” are also fought in digital discovery, pricing transparency, pack architecture, and retailer search placements, not just in television advertising and physical shelf dominance.

Health, Nutrition, and Reformulation

From a public-health perspective, the central soft-drinks issue remains sugar. The WHO sugar guideline recommends reducing free sugars to lower the risk of unhealthy weight gain and dental caries and explicitly names labeling, marketing restrictions, and fiscal policy among the measures countries can use. In the United States, the FDA says the Daily Value for added sugars is 50 grams per day on a 2,000-calorie diet, and labels must declare both grams and percent Daily Value. FDA also notes that sugar-sweetened beverages are among the main sources of added sugars in American diets.

The evidence base supporting sugar reduction is now broad enough that an analytical article should treat it as settled background rather than a controversial claim. A major JAMA Network Open systematic review and meta-analysis found that implemented sugar-sweetened beverage taxes were associated with 82% tax pass-through and 15% lower SSB sales, while also finding evidence of reformulation under tiered taxes. Separately, a 2025 Nature Medicine analysis estimated substantial global burdens of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar-sweetened beverages, reinforcing why governments continue to view the category as a major policy target.

Artificial sweeteners and other sugar substitutes require more nuance. WHO’s 2023 guideline recommends against using non-sugar sweeteners for weight control or for reducing the risk of noncommunicable diseases, while also stressing that this guidance is not a toxicological safety judgment on any individual sweetener. The FDA, by contrast, says approved high-intensity sweeteners are considered safe under their conditions of use, lists six approved food-additive sweeteners, and notes that steviol glycosides and monk-fruit extracts are used under GRAS pathways. In short, regulatory agencies broadly distinguish safety from effectiveness as a weight-management strategy, and good journalism should do the same.

Aspartame illustrates the point. In 2023, IARC classified aspartame as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), while JECFA reaffirmed an acceptable daily intake of 0–40 mg/kg body weight and the FDA publicly disagreed with IARC’s hazard interpretation, emphasizing that JECFA did not raise safety concerns at current levels of use. That does not eliminate scientific debate: a large 2022 BMJ cohort study reported an association between higher artificial-sweetener intake and elevated cardiovascular risk. But the right analytical conclusion is caution and precision, not sensationalism: observational associations are not the same as proof of causation, and hazard classification is not the same as exposure-risk determination.

This is why reformulation has become the industry’s preferred middle path. It allows manufacturers to respond to health policy, retailer bargaining pressure, and consumer sugar concerns without abandoning the category’s convenience and hedonic appeal. Euromonitor’s 2024 data show this clearly: reduced-sugar carbonated soft drinks grew 7%, while functional segments such as energy drinks, sports drinks, and electrolyte powders also expanded. In editorial terms, the modern “nutritious beverage” narrative is therefore less about classic soda becoming health food and more about soft drinks borrowing cues from wellness categories—lower sugar, added electrolytes, vitamins, probiotics, adaptogens, or “made without” positioning—while remaining subject to close label scrutiny.

Private Label Soft Drinks

Private label is best understood as a retailer-controlled brand architecture rather than a simple generic substitute. NIQ reported that private labels delivered 5.6% value-sales growth globally in the 12 months to Q2 2024, while PLMA reported that private-label sales in Europe reached €354.5 billion as of July 2024 and represented 39% of total grocery market value. In Europe’s three largest grocery markets—Germany, the United Kingdom, and France—PLMA put the collective private-label share at 40%. Yet private-label progress is uneven by category: in the UK, Kantar said branded products still account for more than 75% of soft-drinks spending, underlining the continuing power of brand equity in beverages even as own label gains ground in wider grocery.

What has changed is the quality and strategic ambition of private labels. PLMA’s 2024 European survey found that 94% of retailers and 79% of private-label suppliers viewed private label as “brands in their own right,” while 85% of retailers said private-label quality was better than or equal to manufacturers’ brands. The same survey also found that the retailer-supplier relationship is increasingly seen as more strategic and less price-centric, with sustainability, transparency, and innovation taking a larger role. For an analytical article, this is the key shift: private label soft drinks are no longer just cheap colas; they are retailer-owned product systems designed to reinforce retailer identity, margin control, and customer loyalty.

Carrefour is a strong case study from a major European market. In its 2024 Universal Registration Document, Carrefour said private-label products represented 37% of the Group’s food sales, up one point year on year, and that the Group aims for 40% of food sales by 2026. Carrefour also reported that it had been engaged since 2018 in removing controversial substances from own-brand products; on page 24 of the same filing, it said that since 2022 it had removed 1,336 tonnes of sugar and 252 tonnes of salt from Carrefour-brand products, while expanding Nutri-Score labeling across its assortments. This is private label as a lever for pricing, nutrition, and shopper guidance at once.

Walmart shows the North American version of the same playbook. In April 2026 Walmart announced a major redesign of Great Value, emphasizing shoppability, consistent placement of nutrition information and benefit claims, and improved digital discoverability. In October 2025 it separately announced the removal of synthetic dyes and more than 30 other ingredients from U.S. private-brand foods, explicitly tying the move to customer demand for transparency and simpler ingredients. This matters for soft drinks because it shows how retailer-owned food and beverage portfolios are increasingly governed by the same cleaner-label logic that once belonged mainly to premium brands.

Mercadona offers a third model: trust through supply-chain identity. The retailer says the brands it has developed since 1996 are produced by integrated supplier-manufacturers and are clearly identified on the labels, and it describes its supplier relationship as one based on trust, transparency and mutual commitment. In practice, that model helps explain why private label in Spain often behaves less like a discount afterthought and more like a destination brand family.

Comparative table of selected major-brand and private-label examples

The table underscores two structural points. First, the branded price premium remains large: in the UK example, Coca-Cola’s per-litre price is about 3.3 times Tesco Classic Cola’s; in the Walmart U.S. example, Coca-Cola’s per-ounce price is roughly three times that of Great Value Dr Thunder Diet. Second, the ingredient architecture often converges more than the branding suggests. Across national brands and private labels alike, the core technical toolkit is still the same—carbonated water, sweetener system, acidulant, color, flavour, caffeine—with the main differences lying in sweetener choice, flavour IP, packaging, and marketing support.

Regulation, Consumer Preferences, and Sustainability

Regulation now shapes soft drinks from several directions at once: labels, taxes, ingredient disclosure, and packaging rules. In the U.S., the FDA requires labels to declare added sugars on the Nutrition Facts panel and has proposed a front-of-pack Nutrition Info box that would classify added sugars, sodium, and saturated fat as Low, Med, or High. Canada moved further by requiring a mandatory front-of-package nutrition symbol on foods high in sugars, sodium, or saturated fat, with the transition running to January 1, 2026. In Europe, food information rules rest on Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, while packaging rules are becoming stricter under the new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation 2025/40, which entered into force in February 2025 and generally applies from August 2026.

Taxation is also becoming structurally important rather than exceptional. WHO’s current database shows 116 countries applying national excise taxes to at least one sugar-sweetened beverage category, yet it estimates that the weighted-average excise tax share on a comparable sugary carbonated drink is only 9.7%, which WHO treats as evidence that many governments still tax too lightly. The policy rationale is strengthened by the real-world evidence: the JAMA meta-analysis found price pass-through and lower sales after SSB taxes, and the UK experience has been widely studied as a reformulation driver. For soft-drink reporting, the important point is not merely that taxes exist, but that they influence pricing, pack design, and recipe engineering.

Consumer preference data support the same story. IFIC reported that 66% of U.S. consumers were trying to limit sugar consumption in 2024, while a November 2024 IFIC sweeteners survey found that 56% of Americans agreed that low- and no-calorie sweeteners can benefit the health of some people. At the same time, Euromonitor’s regional data show that reduced-sugar carbonates already represented 33% of carbonates sales in Western Europe and 26% in North America in 2022, versus 9% in Latin America, suggesting that “healthier soft drink” expectations are strongest in richer markets and still expanding unevenly elsewhere. Younger consumers matter disproportionately here: Euromonitor argues that Gen Z is pushing producers in the Americas toward more natural and health-positioned soft drinks.

Sustainability is now the second major pressure system after health. UNESDA’s circular-packaging commitments call for 100% recyclable beverage packaging and an average 50% recycled content in PET bottles by 2025, plus 90% collection by 2030. Coca-Cola says it now aims for 35%–40% recycled material in primary packaging by 2035 and collection of 70%–75% of the equivalent number of bottles and cans it places on the market annually by 2035, while PepsiCo said it used 15% recycled plastic in plastic packaging in its key packaging markets in 2024 and reduced virgin-plastic tonnage there by 5% year on year. These targets reflect a broader shift from abstract sustainability rhetoric toward specific polymer, collection, and recyclability metrics.

At the same time, packaging remains a contested frontier rather than a solved problem. The European Commission notes that packaging volumes remain high while reuse, collection, and recycling rates are still insufficient, and Euromonitor reports that consumers increasingly connect packaging to environmental responsibility and even to health concerns such as microplastics. Retailers are therefore using packaging as part of the competitive proposition: Pepsi Max’s Tesco listing emphasizes 100% recyclable packaging, BSDA is advocating an interoperable UK deposit-return system for cans and PET by October 2027, and Walmart’s Great Value redesign puts nutrition and benefit cues into a more standardized pack architecture. For publication, the right analytical line is that packaging is no longer separate from product identity; it is part of the value, trust, and compliance equation.

National brands still dominate many markets, especially in image-heavy beverage categories, but private labels are now credible competitors on price, increasingly credible competitors on quality, and rising players in wellness-oriented reformulation.

Suggested References

For publication-quality sourcing in English, the core reference set should start with the WHO Guideline: Sugars Intake for Adults and Children, the WHO Use of Non-Sugar Sweeteners Guideline, the FDA Added Sugars on the Nutrition Facts Label page, and the FDA Front-of-Package Nutrition Labeling proposal. Those four sources establish the essential health and labeling scaffold for any article aimed at an informed general readership.

For industry and market structure, the strongest open English-language sources used here are Euromonitor’s Innovation and functionality drive global soft drinks market to USD1.1 trillion and Soft Drinks Industry Overview; NIQ’s global private-label growth analysis; PLMA’s 2024 European Retailer and Manufacturer Survey; BSDA’s 2025 data pages; Carrefour’s 2024 Universal Registration Document; Walmart’s 2025–2026 private-brand announcements; and official retailer product listings from Tesco and Walmart that show real-time prices and ingredients. For peer-reviewed support, the two most useful analytical studies are the JAMA Network Open meta-analysis on SSB taxation and the BMJ cohort study on artificial sweeteners and cardiovascular disease, which together help keep the article evidence-led and proportionate.