Coca-Cola and Pepsi spend the twentieth century fighting for shelf space, and John Pilger's film traces that rivalry straight into the machinery of war and diplomacy. It opens with Coca-Cola's bottling plants following American troops to the front lines during World War II, funded by the U.S. War Department, and notes the company's Nazi Germany operation continuing regardless of politics. The Cold War section covers Richard Nixon persuading Nikita Khrushchev to be photographed drinking a Pepsi at a Moscow exhibition, a moment that made Pepsi the first American product manufactured inside the Soviet Union. In Chile, the film turns to Pepsi's local boss, who also ran a newspaper that fed information to the CIA in the run-up to the coup against Salvador Allende. Pilger and co-director Alan Lowery let each episode stand as evidence rather than editorializing over it, building a picture of two beverage companies operating less like consumer brands and more like instruments of state power.