Sugar is Coca-Cola's tobacco moment, slow-moving, politically charged, and probably irreversible. More than 50 countries now impose some form of sugar tax, front-of-pack warning label, or advertising restriction on sweetened beverages. Mexico's peso-per-liter tax cut consumption measurably. The UK's Soft Drinks Industry Levy forced reformulation across the industry. Colombia, South Africa, India, and several Southeast Asian nations have followed or are actively legislating. Each new tax doesn't kill the business, but it raises the effective price, stigmatizes the category, and makes the next tax politically easier to pass. Zero Sugar helps, but it doesn't fully solve the problem because regulators increasingly target the category, not just the calorie count. The second challenge is less visible but more structurally painful: currency. Coca-Cola earns in Turkish lira, Argentine pesos, Nigerian naira, Egyptian pounds, and Pakistani rupees, all currencies that depreciate against the dollar over time because of persistent inflation differentials. In FY2025, currency headwinds reduced reported revenue growth by several percentage points even as local-currency organic growth looked healthy. This isn't a one-year problem. It's a permanent feature of being a dollar-reporting company whose growth depends on emerging markets with weaker currencies. Then there's plastic. Coca-Cola produces roughly 3 million tonnes of plastic packaging annually. Environmental groups have named it the world's largest corporate plastic polluter multiple years running. The company has pledged to collect and recycle a bottle for every one it sells by 2030, but the infrastructure doesn't exist in most of its highest-growth markets. Failure here risks regulatory bans on single-use plastic, consumer boycotts, and ESG-driven investor pressure, all at once. I'd argue the most dangerous long-term risk is subtler than any of these: category fragmentation. Consumers under 35 increasingly define beverages by function, hydration, energy, protein, gut health, focus, rather than by brand loyalty to a cola. That benefits niche brands with authentic positioning and hurts large corporations trying to credibly compete in wellness segments. Coca-Cola can buy its way into these categories (BodyArmor, fairlife, Topo Chico), but it can't always scale them without flattening the identity that made them attractive in the first place. The Honest Tea exit in 2022 proved that.