Name: Skol

Alloa, on the River Firth in Scotland, was a major brewing town in the Nineteenth Century because of its good water supply, access to barley and the ease with which the beer could be shipped to London. The Alloa Brewery was established in 1810 but it was 125 years before it developed a lager which it called Graham's Golden Lager. In 1951 the brewery was bought by Inde Coope and eight years later Graham's Golden Lager was relaunched as Skol, the Swedish version of "cheers". Inde Coope then merged with Tetley of Leeds and Ansells of Birmingham to create Allied Breweries and Skol became the firm's major lager brand but although sales doubled they still represented just a fraction of the beer market in England and so Allied Breweries began to look abroad for bigger lager markets and acquired the Rotterdam brewing from Oranjeboom and planned to use that as a platform to turn Skol lager into a leading European brand. This was not a success and Allied gradually got out of the brewing business and Skol now belongs to Carlsberg.

In Brazil Skol was introduced in 1967 by the local brewing firm Group S, which owned a variety of local breweries. This was a big success and Cervejarias Reunidas Skol/Caracu SA became a major player in the Brazilian market and in 1980 the right to produce Skol was bought by rival Brahma. The firm wanted to increase the profile of the brand and agreed to sponsor Emerson Fittipaldi's F1 team in 1980 and 1981 but after Fittipaldi retired the company lost interest in the sponsorship and withdrew in 1982. Brahma later became heavily involved in sponsorship with Raul Boesel in CART in the mid 1990s.