what exactly is a "contour bottle" ??

Answer 1

The old glass Coca Cola bottles are contour bottles. They have a shape to them.

Answer 2

http://www.franchise-uk.co.uk/franchise-news-article-84448697.htm

In 1915, recognizing the need for a distinctive bottle to stem the tide of imitators, the Coca-Cola Company contacted numerous bottle manufacturers to submit designs for consideration. Taking advantage of the company’s summer shut down, the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute took on the challenge of designing "a glass package so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable as one containing Coca-Cola….so distinguishable by touch that even a blind man could correctly identify it."

Chapman J. Root, founder and president, turned the project over to his supervisory staff: Alexander Samuelson, plant superintendent; T. Clyde Edwards, auditor; Roy Hurt, secretary; Earl R. Dean, mold shop supervisor; and William R. Root, son of the president.

T. Clyde Edwards was asked to research a bottle design that would meet the essential requirements. With that in mind Edwards looked up both coca and cola at the library. He found a line drawing of the cocoa bean pod which he showed to Earl Dean. (Cocoa is a few pages after coca in the 1913 Encyclopedia Britannica he was using) Together, Edwards and Dean, reported to Samuelson with a sketch of the cocoa bean and their idea for a bottle design. From this research, Earl Dean developed a bottle design which incorporated a bulging middle with parallel vertical grooves and tapered ends.

A limited number of bottles, of this first design. was produced. The bottling equipment then in use, however, would not operate with the bottle’s large center bulge. The Root team devoted most of the summer to redesigning the bottle.

Meeting in Atlanta, Ga., at the 1915 bottlers convention, the judges evaluated each entry for originality, exclusiveness of design, ease of handling, production cost, and potential consumer recognition. The Root bottle, they determined, was the best submitted.

This "bottle-shaped concept" was patented in Alexander Samuelson’s name on November 16, 1915. The bottle was one of the first glass containers to be patented solely on its distinctive shape. When it expired, a successor patent was issued to the Root Company in 1923 and under this license the company received a 5 cents per gross royalty until 1937 when Coca-Cola acquired the rights.

In 1960 the "contour bottle" was registered as a trade-mark rather than a patent. Whereas patents eventually run out, a trade-mark does not; as long as it is kept in continuous use, a trade-mark lasts indefinitely. Granting a trade-mark to a commercial package was most unusual, but the Coca-Cola Company convinced the Patent Office that the very shape, the "distinctively shaped contour" in their words, had become so well know that it had taken on trade-mark status. Indeed, the Company was correct, for the "contour bottle" or "hobble skirt bottle" (so named for a woman’s dress fashion popular from 1910—1914) has been called the most recognized container in the history of the world.

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/historybottling.html
http://www.contourbottle.com/

Answer 3

Same as Josh