First discovered in Roman times, the spring in the town of Vergeze between Nimes and Montpellier was open to all until 1863, when Napoleon III declared its bubbly liquid an official natural mineral water, meaning it could be sold commercially.

Farmer Louis Rouviere and a doctor named Louis Perrier later bought the property around the spring. In 1899, Perrier launched the Vergeze Mineral Water company and won the backing of British financier Sir John Harmsworth.

It was Harmsworth who designed the signature green Perrier bottle, drawing inspiration from the Indian clubs he used daily for his gymnastic exercise, and who astutely decided to market the sparkling water across the British empire.

British military officers quickly adopted Perrier as their mixer of choice, especially with whiskey, and the water eventually made it to the royal dining table at Buckingham Palace, a distinction long mentioned on the product label.

Harmsworth then tackled the French market. In 1993, the year of his death, 19 million bottles of Perrier were filled from the now famous spring.

After World War II, Harmsworth's heirs sold the Perrier business to a young currency exchange agent, Gustave Leven, who invested heavily in high-tech US bottling equipment.

From 1948 to 1952, Perrier production exploded from 30 to 150 million bottles a year. A new factory nicknamed 'the Cathedral' was built in 1950, followed two decades later by a glassworks in 1973. The company expanded with the acquisition of a spring in Contrexeville, eastern France.

Leven strengthened the company by bringing together a talented trio -- he worked on strategy, Maurice Epry managed the firm and novelist Jean Davray took care of publicity, coming up with the classic slogan "Perrier c'est fou" (Perrier, it's crazy).

In 1976, Leven tempted the waters on the other side of the Atlantic, successfully launching Perrier in the United States by lauding its health benefits, especially for those trying to lose weight.

It quickly became the trendy drink of choice, and Orson Welles starred in Perrier television ads.

The self-proclaimed "champagne of waters", to which natural gas is added, reached the height of its popularity in 1989, when around 1.2 billion bottles were produced.

But the following year, disaster struck when Leven decided to recall 280 million bottles of Perrier from store shelves around the world after a US lab discovered minute traces of benzene, a carcinogen, in some bottles.

The crisis cost the company a total of one billion francs (152.5 million euros, 186.6 million dollars). That same year, Leven stepped aside.

His successor Jacques Vincent presided over a two-year bidding war which ended in 1992 with Swiss food giant Nestle winning control of the brand.

The group's subsidiary Nestle Waters became the world's bottled water leader with more than 70 brands in its stable including Perrier, Vittel, Contrex, San Pellegrino and Nestle Aquarel.

Perrier has been and remains the darling of the ad world, from campaigns written by the French author Colette in the 1930s to commercials created in recent years by top directors Ridley Scott and Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Some 830 million bottles of Perrier are now sold each year. The brand has recently tried to diversify with the launch of new products like flavored Perrier Fluo and Eau de Perrier, which has fewer bubbles.

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