TOEFL READING PART

TOEFL READING PART

Bacardi Limited is the largest privately-held, family-owned spirits company in the world. Its brand portfolio comprises more than 200 brands and labels, including the eponymous Bacardi rum. Founded on February 4, 1862, and family-owned for the past seven generations, Bacardi now employs nearly 6,000 people, manufactures its brands at 27 facilities in 16 markets on four continents, with sales in more than 150 countries. Bacardi Limited refers to the Bacardi group of companies, including Bacardi International Limited. The company sells in excess of 200 million bottles per year in nearly 100 countries. The company's sales in 2007 were $5.5 billion, up from $4.9 billion in 2006.

2. Bacardi Limited is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda and has a 16-member board of directors led by the original founder's great-great-grandson, Facundo L. Bacardí. Bacardi used to be headquartered in Cuba, but the Revolutionary War and the tensions in Cuba made the company move. 

3. Bacardi drinks are not found in Cuba today. The main brand of rum in Cuba is called Havana Club, a formerly private company nationalized by the government. Havana Club was not a Bacardi brand, though Bacardi later bought the brand from the original owners, the Arechabala family, who had it seized from them by the Revolutionary Government without compensation. The Cuban government in partnership with French company Pernod Ricard, sells its Havana Club internationally, except for the United States and its territories. Bacardi created Havana Club rum based on the original recipe from the Arechebala’s, and the product is crafted in Puerto Rico and currently sold in Florida. Drinks now made in the former Bacardi distillery are sold in Cuba under the name Cane. Bacardi continues to fight a war in the courts attempting to legalize their own Havana Club trademark outside of the United States. 

4. The company managed the exile from Cuba in a very good way. Today, their name is known worldwide as a classic, high-quality rum but they still face trouble to this day.

5. Bacardi has faced criticism and legal problems for allegedly attempting to mislead consumers into believing they were purchasing rum made in Cuba rather than just marking its heritage. Bacardi advertisements in Spain, since 1966, had described a popular combination of rum and Coke as "rum and coke." However, after 1998, it began to describe the drink as Cuba Libre – literally translated as "Free Cuba" which is the original name of the drink and how it's mostly called in Latin America. In this instance, Bacardi faced a legal ruling from the Spanish Association of Advertising Users which forced the company to stop the advertisement. They concluded that it could "mislead the viewer as to the true nature of the product" as the advert contained so many pieces of Caribbean imagery, one might conclude it came from Cuba.

6. The Bacardi legacy lives on in Santiago and Havana through its grand buildings and its historic significance. The Bacardi Building in Old Havana is regarded as one of the finest Art Deco buildings in Latin America. Ernest Hemingway lived in Cuba from 1939 until shortly after the Cuban Revolution. He lived in the small town of San Francisco de Paula, located very close to the Company’s Modelo Brewery for Hatuey beer at el Cotorro. In 1954, Compañía "Ron Bacardi" S.A. paid him homage when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel The Old Man and the Sea (1952), in which he honored the company by mentioning its Hatuey beer. Hemingway also mentioned Bacardí and Hatuey in his novels To Have and Have Not (1937) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

7. This cultural link must also have boosted the company's image, and they also took great advantage of it. To this day, Bacardi has managed to step up from its Cuban exile and make a name for itself. This, from the Cuban point of view, is scandalous. The recipe, the trademark, and the image are all Cuban. So the question is, should Cuba really have thrown the company out?

Questions  

What does 'it' refer to in Paragraph 3?

1-[pic 1]A. Havana Club.

• [pic 2]B. Bacardi.
• [pic 3]C. The owners.
• [pic 4]D. The brand.

2-What can one say about the Bacardi sales in 2007?

...