Budweiser, Corona, Bud Light: A history of America's most popular beer brands

Corona, Bud Light and Budweiser are the most popular beer brands in the United States, with a unique history dating back centuries. Here is a deeper dive.

Beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in the U.S., with the country being the second-largest beer market in the world.

It serves as home to the world's best and most recognizable breweries. 

A study conducted by Statista found that the most recognizable beer brands in the United States are Corona, Bud Light and Budweiser.

The study found that 87% of its respondents recognized Bud Light and Corona, while 85% were aware of Budweiser. Read below to find out the history of these popular brews.

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Bud Light is manufactured by German American brewing company Anheuser-Busch. The beer was initially released in 1982 under the name Budweiser Light as part of the company's marketing campaign for a low-calorie beer, later changing the name to Bud Light for marketing simplicity. 

The drink is one of the most recognizable brews in the United States and one of the best-selling brands under the Busch label.

During the 1990s, the beverage became popular throughout the country via a creative marketing campaign filled with celebrity commercial appearances – this also came on the heels of the company's immensely popular "Spuds MacKenzie" campaign of the late 1980s, featuring a bull terrier dubbed "the original party animal."

However, Bud Light's more recent advertising endeavors have garnered the beer brand its fair share of negative publicity — particularly in the form of a 2023 partnership with transgender social media personality Dylan Mulvaney. 

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A series of viral ads featuring the influencer triggered immediate, widespread backlash, leading to highly-publicized boycotts of Bud Light and the company reporting significant slippage in key metrics it had long dominated. 

The boycotts have proven to be remarkably persistent.

Anheuser-Busch "has spent all the money. They've done all the right things," Beer Business Daily publisher Harry Schuhmacher told Fox News Digital in March. "They spent the money on the right things. And amazingly, it hasn't really affected the trend that much. It's unbelievable."

Despite the blowback from the Mulvaney campaign – or, perhaps, because of it – Bud Light's name recognition saw a 2% increase over the past year, still rendering it as one of the best-known beer brands in the country.

Originating just south of the border in Mexico, Corona is the best-known foreign beer brand in the U.S. It is also a label that has been around for almost a full century.

The beer is produced by Grupo Modelo, Mexico's largest brewer. In celebration of the brewery's 10th anniversary, Grupo Modelo created Corona in 1925. 

Approximately a year after the beer was released to the public, the company decided to use clear, transparent bottles to distinguish Corona from other beers, and it has served as an iconic symbol for the product ever since.

In 1937, the brewery released a finer-quality version of the beer called Corona Extra, and it quickly became Mexico's best-selling beer through an aggressive marketing campaign. By the 1980s, Corona started becoming popular in various urban centers in the United States. By the mid-1990s, Corona was the best-selling imported beer in the country.

Known by its iconic nickname, "The King of Beers," Budweiser is another well-known and easily recognized Anheuser-Busch staple. 

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The pale lager was created in 1875 by Adolphus Busch, a German American immigrant, and quickly became one of the best-selling brews in the country. Busch worked with his wife, Lilly Anheuser, to expand the beer's marketing and fine-tune its unique taste.

The pair started using pasteurization so that the beer could travel over long distances without damaging the product – one of the first breweries in the country to use this method at the time. 

The modern Anheuser-Busch company was built on the efforts of the couple as they worked together to create America's best-selling beer – and Budweiser has long served as its flagship brand.

Budweiser also owes some of its impressive brand recognition to a history of successful, wildly popular television advertisements that made their way over the airwaves in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Budweiser Frogs, the "Whassup" guys, and the company's uncharacteristically majestic Super Bowl commercials featuring herds of Clydesdale horses rank among some of the most iconic campaigns in advertising history.

Phillip Nieto contributed reporting.

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