Let’s hit the rewind button on this story and travel back in time for more than 100 years. As most collectors know, Coca-Cola entered the world in 1886. Joseph A Biedenharn of Vicksburg, Miss., is credited with bottling Coca-Cola for the first time in 1894, using a Hutchinson bottle.

But the Hutchinson, which used an iron stopper and rubber washer to seal in the contents, was neither a sanitary nor a satisfactory container. It soon gave way (during the early 1900s) to the straight-sided Coca-Cola bottle with its cork-lined "crown" stopper.

The Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Ind., was among the companies manufacturing the early Coca-Cola bottles. It embossed the base of its bottles with its own distinctive name — ROOT.

From 1900 to 1916, bottlers of Coca-Cola pretty much had their own way in designing bottles to contain the drink. While Coca-Cola was always embossed on the bottle, bottlers sometimes added their own names such as was the case of W.L. Williams of Sandersville, Ga., whose straight-sided bottles bore his name in large block letters on their shoulders.

The Coca-Cola hierarchy decided if the drink was to reach national prominence, steps should be taken to standardize the shape of the bottle "so a person can recognize it as a Coca-Cola bottle when he feels it in the dark," explained one official.

Cigar store Indians pose in front of an early drug store adjacent to the Root Family Museum. Below: Close-ups reveal (left) a carved and painted example in the guise of Pocahontas (circa 1880-1890). At right is another in the guise of a Seminole chief of the same era.

So the company contacted each parent bottler and asked them to come up with such a design. A committee was formed to judge the design and at the bottlers’ convention in Atlanta in 1916, the Root Glass Company’s design, which was to become world famous, was chosen.

Bottles were blown in the shape of the modified final design, which was patented on Nov. 16, 1915. It was nearly four years later that the new contour-shaped bottle was being used universally. Main reason was, of course, there were millions of straight-sided Cokes in circulation and each bottler wanted to use them as long as possible.

The Coca-Cola contour bottle went unchanged until 1923 and then Chapman J. Root patented the bottle in his name.

 The only noticeable change was in the date — Dec. 25, 1923 — and the bottles were popularly called "Christmas Cokes."

The Roots sold the glass company in 1932 to concentrate on bottling Coca-Cola and in 1939 created Associated Coca-Cola Bottling Plants Inc., to consolidate its bottling facilities, according to a feature article in Central Florida Business in 1996.

Here's a one-of-a-kind, custom, hand-crafted bench for Coca-Cola lovers, beneath a 1947 sign.

During the next 30 years, the Roots’ Associated Coca-Cola became the nation’s largest independent Coke bottler with plants scattered from St. Louis and the Virgin Islands to New York to Florida. In 1982, the Roots decided to sell the bottling company back to Coca-Cola and did so for $417.5 million, which netted the Roots $238 million for their 57 percent share of the company, according to the article.

The Coca-Cola Company had acquired the contour bottle patent from Root in 1937.

So, when you walk into the Root Family Museum, it’s like stepping into a time capsule — a veritable Coca-Cola collectors’ Heaven.

The family not only collected Coca-Cola memorabilia, but was able to acquire most of it in pristine condition. The Roots didn’t stop at bottles, coolers and signs, but included Ford trucks driven by Coke route men during the 1920s and 1930s.