Pop Art: Coke Debuts Its Special World Cup-Edition Bottle Designs

Last week, Coca-Cola debuted a limited-edition collection of 18 individually designed bottles to celebrate this year's World Cup. And to emphasize just how special these mini-bottles are, the mega-brand opted not to fill them with any soda.

Each of the 18 bottles comes decorated with colorful and splashy artwork inspired by the flags of past host countries (Argentina, USA, Japan are some examples), in addition to future hosts: Brazil, Russia and Quatar. Coke is especially touting the bottles' interactive feature, in which Android, iPhone and Facebook users can register their bottles through brand-specific apps to send messages and bottle avatars to other owners. There are also coded markings on each bottle that, when held up to a smartphone's camera, reveal trippy augmented reality animations.

We're impressed with the brand's effort to embrace technology in something as simple-looking at first glance as an artfully designed bottle. Given Coke's tendency to vary the recipe for its classic formula amongst different countries, as many of us know from getting our hands on the Mexican version, it's kind of a shame that they didn't bottle each country's corresonding cola. There's always 2018...