Havana Club is a brand of rum created in Cuba in 1934. Nowadays Bacardi and Pernod Ricard are engaged in litigation about ownership of the name “Havana Club”.
Today, Havana Club is the only brand of authentic Cuban rum that is known and respected around the world. The history of the legendary brand begins in 1878, when Jose Arechabala, the founder of Havana Club, opened the La Vizcaya distillery in Cardenas, on the coast of Cuba. The distillery produced alcohol, rum, sugar, and other goods.
Production was taken over by Jose Arechabal’s sons in 1934, at which time the company was renamed Havana Club. Already in 1935, Havana Club opened a bar in the center of Havana. This establishment became legendary. In the 1930s-50s, such celebrities as Marlene Dietrich, Jean-Paul Sartre Ernest Hemingway, Nat King Cole, and Harry Cooper visited it.
During the revolution of 1959, the company was nationalized, and the Arechabal family was forced to leave their native island. In the mid-1970s, the Cuban government re-registered the Havana Club brand for itself, and in the 1990s sold half of the company’s shares to the French corporation Pernod Ricard.
Today, Havana Club is the best-selling and best-known Cuban rum in the world. Its production takes place only on the territory of Cuba and at all its stages is controlled by the company’s specialists.
The Havana Club logo consists of a bright red circle framed in gold with a wordmark Havana Club executed in Futura Std Condensed Bold font.
The logo symbolizes the sun that shines on Cuba and makes its rum rich and warm. Due to its color and shape, the Havana Club logo is very recognizable.
The most interesting detail of the logo is it’s mascot icon on the top of the circle. It’s a figure of Giraldilla, the emblem of the city of Havana and it’s free spirit.
La Giraldilla, is a woman statue on the tower of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza. She is supposedly Inés de Bobadilla, successor of her husband as the governor of Cuba in 1539. Before the revolution The Havana Club’s logo was a tree.