Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Coca-Cola Co., the world’s biggest soft-drink maker, said it will remove the “classic” name from its flagship brand, writing the final chapter in one of the greatest marketing blunders in U.S. business history.

The word “classic” only appears on Coca-Cola bottles and cans in the U.S. It was removed from 16-ounce bottles in limited test markets and will come off all products by mid-year to make the company’s packaging consistent worldwide, Scott Williamson, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, said today.

“It gives us a chance to harmonize Coca-Cola’s name in North America with every other country in the world,” Williamson said in a telephone interview.

In April 1985, Coca-Cola introduced New Coke, changing the secret formula first introduced in 1886 when John Stith Pemberton made the syrup and sold it to a pharmacy, which served it as a fountain soda.

“To hear some tell it, April 23, 1985, was a day that will live in marketing infamy,” the company says on its Web site. “That’s the day the Coca-Cola Company took arguably the biggest risk in consumer goods history, announcing that it was changing the formula for the world’s most popular soft drink, and spawning consumer angst the likes of which no business has ever seen.”

Backlash over the switch led Coca-Cola to put the “classic” version on the market alongside New Coke within three months, the company said. New Coke was eventually withdrawn in the U.S.

Reason ‘Disappeared’

“The reason for ‘classic’ as a descriptor has all but disappeared,” Williamson said. The word will remain in small print on the back of bottles and cans in the phrase “Coke Classic Original Formula.”

Beverage Digest reported the change earlier today.

Coca-Cola bottlers began “interchanging” beet sugar, cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup to sweeten the drink in the early 1980s, according to Williamson. He said the switch to corn syrup predated the introduction of New Coke.

Coca-Cola fell 83 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $42.72 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have dropped 26 percent in the past 12 months.

To contact the reporter on this story: Allison Abell Schwartz in New York at aabell@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 30, 2009 16:38 EST