During recent decades brands have rapidly increased their significance at the center of the competitive advantage of global firms. Brands once recognizable only within one country have been taken global. The pursuit of desirable brands has become a prime driver of cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Single brands can now be valued at billions of dollars. Yet the basis of their worth has an elusive quality. Many brands have disappeared over time, while some have gone from strength to strength. As a result, the understanding of the role of brands in the dynamics of global business has proved enormously challenging for researchers in international business and business history.

Teresa da Silva Lopes' Global Brands: The Evolution of Multinationals in Alcoholic Beverages represents a radical breakthrough in the literature on brands and the evolution of global business. In the alcoholic beverages industry, whose global market is currently in excess of $800 billion, this study shows that brands and marketing have been key factors in corporate success and failure over recent decades. This book traces their role over half a century in creating today's global giants. It is based on unique access to corporate archives located on three continents and interviews with leading practitioners. The author provides readers with a rich and nuanced international and comparative account of how the world's leading global businesses in alcoholic beverages grew from the 1960s.