Aside from the association with Santa, there's another potential reason Coca-Cola landed on red. As Reader's Digest says, when Coke contained coke, it used to be sold in drug stores alongside medicine. There were apparently just big barrels of the stuff hanging around inside the late-1800s version of Walgreen's. In order to differentiate the product from alcohol, which was also sold in drug stores (true to their "drug" name), Coca-Cola painted their product's barrels red. There might not have been market research at the time to tell the company that red attracted people's attention, but we can assume they noticed.
And let's be clear: if any company was going to notice par excellence advertising methods, it was Coca-Cola. A quick stroll through Marketing 91's and The Drum's overview of Coke's ad campaigns reveals slogans and commercials as clever as they are relentless, decade by decade. And all of them — 100% — employed strategic use of the color red. 1971's "Hilltop" commercial (posted on YouTube) featured a multinational crew of folks singing about buying Cokes for the world — keep an eye out for the red threaded throughout. The Coca-Cola polar bears have been in use since 1993, toting around red-labeled Coke bottles against snowy, pure white backgrounds. Another instance of world-peace-through-Coke campaigns featured Coke bottles in 2011's "Share a Coke" ad strung in a row and marked with names of family members.
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