Coca-Cola Company, the world’s largest soft-drink maker, started a new advertising group and emerging markets division in a bid to catch PepsiCo Incorporated, whose sales have grown three times faster.

Mary Minnick, who leads the Asian unit after 21 years at the company, will run the marketing and new products unit, Atlanta-based Coca-Cola said yesterday in a statement. The developing markets unit will focus on faster-growing regions including China, Russia, and Eastern Europe. The changes are effective May 1.

The chief executive, E. Neville Isdell, who has made marketing a centerpiece of his turnaround plan, is boosting spending $400 million this year on advertising and new products including Coca-Coca with Lime. The company’s average sales gains of 2.3% the past five years compare with 7.5% for Pepsi-Co, leader in the faster-growing market for noncarbonated drinks.

“Mary Minnick is supplanting the traditional top marketing position,” said Marc Heilweil, president of Atlanta-based Spectrum Advisory Services, which owns 125,000 shares among its $300 million in assets. “Marketing has been the weakest area of the company. The marketing hasn’t been up to Coke’s standards.”

The chief marketing officer, Chuck Fruit, will report to Ms. Minnick as part of the changes.

In the new organization, the company will keep its North America, Latin America, and Africa groups while dividing Europe and Asia into three new units: European Union; North Asia, Eurasia and Middle East, and Southeast Asia and Pacific Rim.

The groups were created to increase a focus on “rapidly developing markets,” Mr. Isdell said in the statement, “as we develop and expand appropriate infrastructure to serve these markets.”

Shares of Coca-Cola fell 22 cents to close at $41.18 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Before yesterday, shares fell 15% in the past year.

The company’s fourth-quarter sales rebounded, led by a 4% gain in international revenue, after declining in the prior quarter for the first time in more than two years. European and Asian volume each rose 3%, helped by a push into faster-growing markets, also including Spain and Turkey. Latin American volume rose 4%, led by Brazil and Argentina.

Coca-Cola will realign its regional groups after Ms. Minnick’s promotion and the retirement on May 1 of Sandy Allan, 60, as European chief. Dominique Reiniche, 49, the top executive in Europe with bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises, will move to Coca- Cola to lead the Western and Central Europe group.

Muhtar Kent, 52, president and CEO of the Efes Beverage Group, will move to Coke to head the North Asia group including China and Russia. Patrick Siewert, 49, president of the East and South Asia group, will lead the new Southeast Asia unit, which includes faster-growing markets such as India and the Philippines.

Ms. Minnick, 45, who has been the president of the Asia group since July 2001, has “experience in a diversity of markets, ranging from the complex Japan market to the growth engine of China,” Mr. Isdell said in the statement. “She has developed expertise in successfully building brands through the combination of effective sales, marketing and new product launches.”

“This puts Mary Minnick in a new position as kind of a supercharged chief marketing officer,” said Robert van Brugge, analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company in New York. “Reshuffling the boxes doesn’t solve Coke’s problems. Pepsi has better long-term growth potential and executes a lot better.”

Coca-Cola Enterprises, the world’s largest bottler, in a separate statement, said it has begun an internal search for a new European executive to replace Ms. Reiniche.

The appointment of Ms. Reiniche is part of Mr. Isdell’s effort to create a “stronger alignment” between Coca-Cola and its bottlers, who have sometimes clashed over issues such as prices, said a UBS Investment Bank analyst, Caroline Levy.

Mr. Isdell, 61, who returned from retirement as a Coca-Cola bottling executive in June to become chief executive, said in November that ineffective advertising and poor morale among employees had hurt sales.

Mr. Isdell replaced the company’s “Real” campaign for its Coca-Cola brand with “Make It Real,” a campaign intended to be more upbeat, in January. The company is also developing new ads to highlight Coca-Cola as a 119-year-old icon.

Coca-Cola’s share of the $65.9 billion American soft-drink market fell to an eight-year low last year, hurt by competition from no. 3 Cadbury Schweppes Plc and cheaper store brands.

The company this year has introduced Coca-Cola with Lime, Full Throttle energy drink, and raspberry and lemon flavors of Dasani water. Diet Coke sweetened with Splenda and a new diet cola called Coca-Cola Zero are planned for later this year.