Costa Coffee is a British coffeehouse chain that started in London in 1971 when two Italian brothers, Sergio and Bruno Costa, began roasting and selling coffee. From that single roastery it grew into the second-largest coffee chain in the world, behind only Starbucks, and since 2019 it has been owned by The Coca-Cola Company. This guide tells the brand's story, explains the famous Mocha Italia blend, walks through the drinks Costa is known for, and shows where you can actually find it around the world.
If you have only ever known Costa as a familiar red-and-cream high-street logo, the history is more interesting than you might expect. It is a genuine family roasting story that scaled into a global machine.
The Costa Coffee story: from a London roastery to a global brand
The Costa family moved from Parma, Italy, to England in the 1950s. In 1971, brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa set up a coffee-roasting operation in London, supplying roasted beans wholesale to caterers and Italian-style coffee shops around the city. At this stage there was no chain of cafes at all. Costa was a roaster first, and that origin still shapes how the brand talks about itself today.
The brothers were fussy about flavour. The story the company tells is that they blind-tasted 112 different recipes before they settled on the one blend they thought was good enough to put their name behind. They called it Mocha Italia, and it remains the house blend across Costa shops and machines decades later.
Costa opened its first actual coffee shop on Vauxhall Bridge Road in London in 1981. From there it expanded steadily across the United Kingdom. In 1995 the British hospitality group Whitbread bought the business, and under Whitbread's ownership Costa grew from a regional player into the dominant coffeehouse brand in the UK and a serious international one. The name still turns up in a few forms in everyday speech and search — people type "caffe costa," "costa coffee company," or even the misspelling "costa kafe" — but it is all the same brand.
The Coca-Cola acquisition
The biggest chapter came in January 2019, when The Coca-Cola Company bought Costa from Whitbread in a deal worth around 4.9 billion US dollars. That purchase gave Coca-Cola its first major hot-drinks brand and a ready-made coffee platform spanning physical cafes, packaged coffee, and self-serve machines. So when people ask "who owns Costa Coffee," the accurate answer today is Coca-Cola — not a small Italian family business anymore, though the family roots are real history.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1971 | Sergio and Bruno Costa start roasting coffee in London |
| 1981 | First Costa coffee shop opens on Vauxhall Bridge Road, London |
| 1995 | Whitbread acquires Costa Coffee |
| 2017 | Costa opens a large new roastery in Basildon, Essex |
| 2019 | The Coca-Cola Company buys Costa for about 4.9 billion US dollars |
What Costa Coffee is known for: the Mocha Italia blend
If there is one thing that defines the brand at the cup level, it is Mocha Italia. This is Costa's signature blend, a mix of Arabica and Robusta beans roasted to a medium-dark profile that aims for a strong, smooth, slightly chocolatey espresso base rather than a bright, acidic, lighter-roast style. It is the coffee behind the espresso in a Costa cappuccino, latte, flat white, or Americano, and it is the same blend used in the self-serve machines and the bags of ground coffee sold in supermarkets.
The blend reflects a particular philosophy. Adding Robusta to Arabica gives more body and a thicker crema, and tends toward bold and roasty rather than delicate and floral. That puts Costa squarely in the comfortable, mainstream, milk-friendly camp — coffee designed to taste good with steamed milk and to be consistent across thousands of locations. If you want to understand why that bean choice matters, our explainer on Arabica versus Robusta beans breaks down exactly what each bean brings to the cup.
The roastery and sourcing
Costa still roasts its own coffee, which is unusual at this scale and is a point of pride for the brand. In 2017 it opened a large roastery in Basildon, Essex, that dramatically increased its roasting capacity and was built with sustainability in mind. The company also talks about responsible sourcing, including Rainforest Alliance certified beans for the coffee it serves in the UK. Owning the roast lets Costa keep the Mocha Italia recipe consistent worldwide, which is the whole point of a signature house blend.
Costa's menu and signature drinks
Costa's menu will look familiar to anyone who knows European-style coffee chains. The core is espresso-based: cappuccino, latte, flat white, Americano, mocha, and the smaller cortado and macchiato styles, all built on the Mocha Italia espresso. If those names blur together for you, our guides on the cappuccino and latte versus cafe latte explain how each drink is actually built.
- Espresso classics — flat white, cappuccino, latte and Americano are the everyday backbone of the menu.
- Iced and cold — iced lattes, iced Americanos, and a cold-brew style line for warm weather.
- Frappes — Costa's blended iced drinks, its answer to the frozen-coffee category, often in flavours like coffee, mocha and caramel.
- Hot chocolate and seasonal specials — Costa leans hard into seasonal menus, especially festive winter drinks, which have become part of the brand's calendar in the UK.
Costa is not positioned as a third-wave specialty bar chasing single-origin pour-overs. It is a high-volume, milk-drink-led, consistency-first chain — which is exactly what most of its customers want. If you are curious about the broader menu of espresso drinks beyond Costa, our roundup of the main types of coffee drinks maps out the whole family.
Costa Express: the self-serve machine side of the business
One thing that sets Costa apart from many cafe chains is Costa Express — the self-serve machines you find in petrol stations, convenience stores, supermarkets and travel hubs. These are not vending machines pouring instant powder. They grind beans and steam fresh milk to pour espresso-based drinks like cappuccino, latte and flat white, using the same Mocha Italia blend as the cafes, with newer integrated units serving both hot and iced drinks and hundreds of possible combinations.
There are thousands of these machines worldwide, and they massively extend the brand's reach beyond its physical cafes. For Coca-Cola, this self-serve network is a big part of why Costa was an attractive purchase: it puts the brand in places a full coffee shop could never fit. Costa describes its total footprint as several thousand cafes plus a much larger number of these express points.
Where Costa Coffee operates around the world
Costa is the largest coffee chain in the UK, where the bulk of its cafes are located, and the second largest in the world overall. Beyond the UK it has a strong presence across Europe — Poland is one of its biggest markets, the result of acquiring a regional chain there — and it operates widely in countries such as Spain. In Asia, China has long been one of Costa's largest markets, and the brand has continued opening in new countries, including a relatively recent first store in Japan. Costa now operates in dozens of countries across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Availability and exact store counts shift over time and vary a lot by country, so the honest answer to "is there a Costa near me" is: check Costa's own store finder on its website or app for your country, or search Costa Coffee in a maps app. Whether Costa operates where you live depends entirely on the region — it is huge in some markets and absent in others.
| Brand | Origin | Owner | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Costa Coffee | UK (London, 1971) | The Coca-Cola Company | Mocha Italia blend, UK high streets, Costa Express machines |
| Starbucks | US (Seattle, 1971) | Starbucks Corporation | Largest coffee chain globally, Frappuccino, seasonal drinks |
| Dunkin' | US (Massachusetts, 1950) | Inspire Brands | Coffee and donuts, drive-thru, US heritage |
| Dutch Bros | US (Oregon, 1992) | Dutch Bros Inc. | Drive-thru kiosks, blended and energy drinks |
How Costa compares to other big coffee chains
Costa is most often compared to Starbucks, and the rivalry is real in the UK, where Costa typically holds the larger share of cafes. The flavour philosophies differ: Costa's Mocha Italia leans bold, roasty and Robusta-inclusive, while many rivals favour an all-Arabica profile. Stylistically Costa sits in the comfortable mainstream — reliable, milk-forward, everywhere — rather than the specialty or drive-thru lanes that define some American chains.
If you want the full picture of the big players, we have separate brand stories for the other major chains: read our guides to Dunkin', the US donuts-and-coffee institution, and Dutch Bros, the fast-growing American drive-thru chain. Each has a distinct identity worth understanding on its own terms.
The bottom line on Costa Coffee
Costa Coffee is a genuine coffee story that scaled: two Italian brothers roasting beans in 1971 London, one obsessively chosen blend, and decades of steady growth into the world's second-largest coffee chain, now owned by Coca-Cola. What it is known for is consistency — the same bold Mocha Italia espresso in a cafe, a convenience-store machine, or a supermarket bag, wherever you find it. If this sent you down the rabbit hole of how the big chains differ and how the drinks themselves are built, keep exploring the coffee hub and our breakdown of the main coffee drinks next.