<P> The Coca - Cola Company sought ways to increase their prices, even approaching the U.S. Treasury Department in 1953 to ask that they mint a 7.5 cent coin . The Treasury was unsympathetic . In another attempt, The Coca - Cola Company briefly implemented a strategy where one in every nine vending machine bottles was empty . The empty bottle was called an "official blank". This meant that, while most nickels inserted in a vending machine would yield cold drinks, one in nine patrons would have to insert two nickels in order to get a bottle . This effectively raised the price to 5.625 cents . Coca - Cola never implemented this strategy on a national scale . </P> <P> Throughout its history, the price of Coca - Cola had been especially sticky, but in the 1940s, inflation in the United States had begun to accelerate, making nickel Coke unsustainable . As early as 1950, Time reported Coca - Cola prices went up to six cents . In 1951, Coca - Cola stopped placing "five cents" on new advertising material, and Forbes Magazine reported on the "groggy" price of Coca - Cola . After Coca - Cola president Robert Woodruff's plan to mint a 7.5 cent coin failed, Business Weekly reported Coke prices as high as 6, 7, and 10 cents, around the country . By 1959, the last of the nickel Cokes had been sold . </P>

Price of a bottle of coke in 1980