Last June, the Coca-Cola Co. was faced with a major crisis: Some 250 people throughout Belgium and France became ill after drinking the popular soft drink. Of that number, 100 were Belgium schoolchildren who had to be hospitalized.
Although the situation was bad enough, the company made it much worse by denying that Coca-Cola could have been the problem. As a result, several European nations halted its sale and the company was forced to recall 14 million cases of the soft drink.