Is there really any other brand of coffee? In the opinion of Italians, the others pale by comparison. The number one choice for coffee by Italians in Italy, Illy Caffe, is served in the finest bars across Italy.

The history of Illy caffè is inextricably linked to the lives of the company's founder, Francesco Illy, and his family. Of Hungarian origin, Francesco came to Trieste during World War I as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. After the war, he remained in the city, which had recently come under Italian rule, and in 1933 he set up a business in the cocoa and coffee sector, eventually deciding to concentrate exclusively on coffee. From the beginning, Francesco Illy was interested in espresso coffee. In 1935 he invented the first automatic coffee machine which substituted compressed air for steam; the Illetta, the predecessor of today's espresso machines. He also devised a new packaging system for preserving coffee in which the cans were pressurized with inert gases instead of air. Illy coffee was soon "exported" outside the immediate Trieste area, and was eventually sold all over Italy. After the Second World War, control of the company passed to Ernesto Illy, son of the founder, who started a research laboratory that soon became the source of numerous new inventions and patents. It was Ernesto, a scientist and researcher, who established cooperation agreements with universities and research centers, and who promoted premium coffee around the globe.