Costa grew from a London roastery into the UK’s biggest chain.

Costa Coffee is Britain’s coffee giant, built on a deep, distinctive colour and an Italian roastery heritage. It was founded in 1971 in London by brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa, whose family had emigrated from Parma, Italy. Crucially, Costa started as a coffee roastery on Fenchurch Street supplying local caterers — not as a café; the first Costa store opened in 1981 on Vauxhall Bridge Road. That roaster-first heritage still anchors the brand’s claim to real coffee craft, embodied in its long-standing signature blend, “Mocha Italia.” (Honest caveats: no official brand hex or wordmark typeface is publicly documented, and Costa’s logo/mark specifics aren’t firmly sourced, so the claret, type and mark details here are approximate.)

The visual signature is the deep claret red (a rich maroon), paired with cream and a coffee-bean motif — a colour so distinctive it instantly separates Costa from the greens and browns of its rivals. From that base, Costa grew into the largest coffeehouse chain in the UK and the second-largest in the world, with roughly 4,000 locations across dozens of countries, plus the ubiquitous Costa Express self-serve machines in petrol stations and shops. A fun brand footnote: Costa’s master taster, Gennaro Pelliccia, reportedly had his tongue insured for £10 million with Lloyd’s of London in 2009 — a classic bit of coffee-craft PR.

The single most important fact to get right is ownership. Costa was owned by Whitbread from 1995 (when it had just 41 stores) — but in a landmark deal, The Coca-Cola Company acquired Costa: announced on 31 August 2018 for £3.9 billion (about $5.1 billion) and completed on 3 January 2019. So today Costa is owned by Coca-Cola, not Whitbread — the beverage giant’s big move into hot drinks and coffee. Getting that right (Coca-Cola since 2019, not Whitbread) is the credibility marker for any Costa brand write-up.

Costa lives in claret red. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Costa’s palette is its signature claret red — a deep, rich maroon — paired with cream, warm coffee brown and a touch of gold. That distinctive dark red is the brand’s single greatest visual asset: it’s warm, premium and unmistakably Costa, and it stands out sharply in a category dominated by greens and light browns. The cream and gold add warmth and a hint of quality, while the coffee-bean motif ties it to the product. It’s a mature, cosy, slightly premium scheme for a mass-market chain. The honest caveat: Costa publishes no official public brand hex — the claret here is an approximation (community sources cite values around a deep maroon), not a confirmed spec.

The lesson is a distinctive colour that defines a category position. Costa’s deep claret red sets it apart from every green-and-brown competitor and makes it instantly recognisable on any UK high street. For designers, it’s a reminder that a rich, unusual signature colour can carve out a clear, ownable position. The takeaways: choose a distinctive signature colour that separates you from category norms (claret in a green-and-brown field); pair it with warm, premium-leaning accents; and treat specific hexes as approximate when no official spec is published.

The wordmark is an elegant serif — warm and premium.

Costa leans on an elegant serif feel — refined, slightly traditional letterforms that read as warm, established and a touch premium, matching a brand with an Italian roastery heritage and a deep claret livery. The serif character signals craft and quality rather than budget or hype, and it pairs naturally with the rich maroon and the coffee-bean motif. It’s type that suggests a proper coffee house with roots, which is exactly the positioning Costa has cultivated as it scaled from a London roaster to a global chain. (Because the exact face isn’t documented, the honest description is “an elegant serif,” not a named font.) The type behaves like the brand: warm, refined and premium — an Italian roaster at scale.

Costa scaled on a distinctive colour and Italian heritage.

Costa is a lesson in scaling a brand on a distinctive colour and a craft story. As it grew from a single London roastery into the UK’s biggest coffee chain, Costa held onto two assets: its unmistakable claret red, which separates it from every green-and-brown rival, and its Italian roaster heritage (the Costa brothers, the Mocha Italia blend), which lends real coffee credibility to a mass-market operation. That combination — one ownable colour plus an authentic craft narrative — let Costa feel both distinctive and trustworthy at enormous scale, and made it valuable enough for Coca-Cola to buy for billions.

For designers and brand-builders, Costa offers a clear takeaway: a distinctive colour plus a genuine craft story can carry a brand to scale. The lessons: own a signature colour that defies category convention (claret among greens and browns); keep a real heritage narrative alive as you grow (the roastery origin, the signature blend); and maintain a warm, premium-leaning identity so mass scale still feels considered. It’s also a reminder to keep the facts precise — Costa was founded in 1971 as a London roastery by brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa (first café 1981); it’s the UK’s largest coffee chain with the Mocha Italia blend and Costa Express machines; and it was acquired by The Coca-Cola Company (announced August 2018, £3.9bn, completed January 2019), having been owned by Whitbread since 1995. Costa scaled on colour and craft — proof that a distinctive identity plus a real story can build a category leader.

Keep Costa Coffee’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.