(FORTUNE Magazine) – When tapped by his father to become president of Coca-Cola in 1923, Robert Woodruff wasn't looking to build an icon. "My job is to sell Coca-Cola, to see that as many people as possible are able to enjoy it," he once said. In the end, he was selling Coke to the world, the first marketer ever to cover the planet with a single product. Woodruff believed that knowledge bubbled up from within a company's ranks: He rode the cross-country rails to visit personnel and encouraged his bottlers to talk to customers--an exchange that eventually led to the expansion of Coke's single-product line. During World War II, Woodruff sent 64 portable bottling plants to follow American troops; in the wake of the war, many of them became permanent features on the landscape and the foundation for Woodruff's astonishing success. By 1950 the curvaceous bottle was more familiar in some cultures than the American flag.

Like most great minds in business, Woodruff had no model and no use for pessimism. And despite postwar economic uncertainty, he sensed the seemingly limitless possibilities for his fizzy drinks. "We're not selling the world short," he told Time. "We're playing the world long." Other great brand mechanics--including Sony's Akio Morita, McDonald's Ray Kroc, Nike's Phil Knight, and adman Leo Burnett--shared a similar view of global potential: While the day to day of business might be about profits, brand building is about giving a single, often mundane product an identity that inspires loyalty and passion.

Ray Kroc certainly understood as much. His mantra of "Quality, Service, Cleanliness, and Value" may sound robotic, but he built his company on it. The former Multimixer salesman was such a brand zealot that he was known to personally police the chain's stores. "He'd show up unannounced, and the next thing you knew, this guy in a tailor-made suit's picking up disposed napkins on the street," recalls Herb Peterson, the McDonald's operator who, encouraged by Kroc, dreamed up the Egg McMuffin. But Kroc was also big on innovation. "He was always looking for new things that would increase the business," says Peterson. To wit, several flops can be traced to Kroc--like the Hulaburger, topped with a pineapple slice. But the point is that Kroc--unlike the Arch Deluxe or the Sony Betamax or New Coke--recovered. In establishing a brand, failure is itself an art.

Even the best ideas, translated into great products, don't automatically create brand awareness or buzz. When Sony's Morita built a tiny portable stereo--over his engineers' objections--initial sales were disappointing. One reason: His marketers were keen on selling the gadget under different names, like the Soundabout in the U.S. and the Freestyle in Sweden. Once Morita redubbed his machine the Walkman, Sony, already a formidable brand, found itself with an icon on its hands.

It was a subtle change on Morita's part. Had he been working with Leo Burnett, founder of the eponymous Chicago ad agency, Morita might have been reminded that even great brands need tweaking, cajoling. Indeed, Burnett's Marlboro Man, created for Philip Morris in 1954, accomplished the most remarkable tweak of all, turning a ladies' product--the filtered cigarette--into a men's. Burnett believed that advertising and marketing had to speak intelligently, and with imagery, to people's imaginations. As he explained to a gathering of ad executives in 1955, "Before you can have a share of market, you must have a share of mind."

Few of these men could have predicted how--or when--their brands would achieve global liftoff, that their logos would transcend the companies themselves. Woodruff knew that moment had arrived in the late '20s, when he saw that per capita Coke sales were bigger in Montreal than in Miami. For Phil Knight, the epiphany came shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, as he rolled into east Berlin to visit a few stores. "Outside, there were these huge Nike banners," recalls Knight. "It was a truly defining moment, and that's when it really hit: We're not just a company anymore."

Like charged atomic particles, great brands and their creators have a natural affinity. Coke and McDonald's have been allied for decades; Leo Burnett Co. has worked on the McDonald's account since 1981. Even Nike and Sony had a meeting of the minds: Back in the mid-1980s, when Sony was swallowing up entertainment companies, Knight looked up Morita in Japan. Sitting down to speak about the creative process and R&D, it was immediately clear that while the two came from totally different worlds, they understood each other perfectly. "I have a pair of your sneakers in my closet," confided Morita. "Well," replied Knight, "I have six of your TVs in my house."

--Shelly Branch

This is the first in a series of features nominating finalists for our BUSINESSMAN OF THE CENTURY award. We will announce the winner in the Nov. 22 issue of FORTUNE. Stay tuned.