IN BLOOM

Diageo once owned Burger King and Häagen-Dazs. Now it's a drinks empire with Guinness, Baileys, and 11 other billion-dollar brands.

- PRARTHANA PRAKASH

IF DIAGEO DREW its family tree, its roots would go all the way to the 17th century, further back than many New World countries like the U.S. or Canada.

Since then, its brands have become an essential party guest, whether through Johnnie Walker whisky, Guinness beer, or Smirnoff vodka.

Still, the London-headquartered company we know today is just 27 years old. Some of its most iconic brands were started by accident or were the experiment of a single individual. But today they're household names around the world.

Diageo was born in 1997 from the marriage of Grand Metropolitan and Guinness, two British companies that had become globally significant in their own ways. Guinness, already a multibillion-dollar brewer 30 years ago, was in a joint venture with the luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Bernard Arnault was one of its board members. Grand Metropolitan, on the other hand, owned alcohol brands and food chains like Burger King and Häagen-Dazs.

The merger, worth $33 billion at the time, ultimately created a food and beverage juggernaut. It wasn't until a few years after the deal that Diageo shed its food segment and transformed into predominantly a spirits brand.

Establishing trust with consumers under a new name took little time, as most well-known Diageo brands have a vivid look and origin story.

Take Johnnie Walker, for instance.

Its labels are precisely at a 20-degree angle so shoppers can easily identify its bottles. Meanwhile, Baileys, the only creamy liqueur in the market when it came to be in 1974, started as an experiment to mix two of Ireland's signature items: top-notch dairy and whiskey.