Coke and India had a long running dispute over the latter’s requirement of turning over the formulas for products. Coke left India in 1977 over this only returning years later once things were relaxed.
If they are willing to give up the Indian market for years, I don’t think they are willing to give it up to any other country.
A lot of this discussion harks back to an earlier era, in many ways - the assumption that FDA etc. wouldn’t know what was in a product unless the manufacturer disclosed it, that companies would make this or that market choice based on Coke-v-Pepsi ca. 1955…
The bottom line is that any good lab could analyze the content of something like Coke down to the last molecule in a matter of hours - exact content, proportions, good inferences about processes, everything. If you read carefully, both CoCo and PepsiCo admit they know everyone’s formulas, and have for quite some time. But it’s about marketing, not food, and neither C nor P gains anything from copying the other’s product. In fact, New Coke was an attempt to make Coke more Pepsi-like, for all the wrong reasons.
Some products might defy easy analysis, but not something as simple as a blended (that is, not cooked or otherwise “transformed”) soft drink.
Even thirty years ago, labs could analyze the raw KFC coating and find even a fragment of spice had it been there. And that was then…
In general, I think the only time you’d want to clone a product and go head-to-head with the big boys would be if you’re one of the big boys already, and you’re trying to steal some of their thunder. I mean, originally only McDonald’s had chicken nuggets, but within a very short period, just about every fast food chain had some sort of chicken nugget product.
If you’re one of the smaller guys, your best bet is to differentiate yourself in some kind of way that allows you to charge a serious premium. In the booze world, the craft distillers are typically making more interesting variants of traditional booze- either trading on local cachet, or using interesting ingredients or processes. But nobody’s trying to square up to Smirnoff, Bacardi or Jack Daniels on their own turf and make their own bargain vodka or Tennessee Whiskey. Instead, we get interesting local products- typically gins or vodkas with local interest, or small batch brown liquors that have more character than the mass-market commercial stuff.