Troy Taylor

Troy Taylor's business career developed over years of preparation. Raised in Louisiana, he attended Marshall University on a basketball scholarship and studied finance and business law, then worked in banking and consulting for clients in the beverage industry. At a 2017 University of South Florida event, he described spending about two decades learning that industry before becoming a bottler himself.

A 1995 Coca-Cola bottling transaction in Puerto Rico was a turning point in his account. Taylor worked with a group led by Carlos de la Cruz and began thinking about owning a bottling operation. In 2015, he founded Coca-Cola Beverages Florida. The company operates as an independent bottler with an exclusive sales and distribution territory in Florida, and it has grown into the third-largest privately owned and sixth-largest Coca-Cola bottler in the country. Bottlers manufacture and distribute the drinks in their territories under agreements with The Coca-Cola Company, which owns the brands. Later acquisitions extended the Florida operation into additional regions.

Taylor's work also includes industry and civic organizations. Coke Florida's official biography identifies him as its chairman and chief executive and lists board service with the Coca-Cola Bottlers' Association, American Beverage Association and Florida Chamber of Commerce, along with trusteeships at the Brookings Institution and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

In 2025, Black Enterprise honored him with the Earl Graves Sr. Vanguard XCEL Award. Coke Florida's account of the ceremony places the recognition alongside the company's tenth anniversary, and the magazine described the honor as recognizing his work in the beverage industry and the Black community.

Taylor described himself plainly as a Black entrepreneur in an October 2026 Power Broker interview, crediting employees and colleagues for the company's development and discussing the work of learning operations, assembling an experienced team and reinvesting in the business. A decade after its founding, Coke Florida ranks among the largest Coca-Cola bottlers in the country.