Emilio Lavazza. Merchant who expanded his family business into a global brand that sells 14 billion cups of coffee a year

If Italy is synonymous with good coffee, then in Italy Lavazza is synonymous with coffee itself. The company has almost half the domestic retail market, and with a presence in 90 countries has annual sales of more than £1 billion. About 14 billion cups of its coffee are consumed worldwide every year. Much of the company's success can be attributed to the shrewd stewardship of Emilio Lavazza, who during four decades at its helm expanded it from a family business into a global brand.

Lavazza can trace its roots back to 1894, when Emilio's grandfather Luigi opened a grocery shop in the centre of Turin. Coffee was then a costly luxury product, so he took care to concern himself in all its phases, including roasting, while also selling other goods such as sugar and candles. It was only in 1910, when he began to blend different types of bean to give his coffee a longer shelf-life, that he began to make his name.

Other innovations followed, among them the first ready-made coffee, packaged in parchment. During the years after the Second World War, his three sons started to develop the business beyond Turin, and the red and black logo of its delivery vans soon became a familiar sight on Italy's roads. In 1955, aged 23, Beppe Lavazza's son Emilio became the third generation to join the company.

His arrival coincided with two important advances. At their new factory, the company had introduced the gravity process to Italy, in which beans were roasted, blended and wrapped as they fell. This increased efficiency allowed Lavazza to produce 88,000lb (40,000 kg) of coffee a day. In 1958 it began to sell the first vacuum-packed blend in Italy, Paulista. The company already advertised on the radio, but it was Emilio who was to raise its profile still higher through a series of campaigns in the medium that was becoming inseparable from Italian life — television. Many of the characters and catchphrases created for these remain a part of the national culture today. One such campaign, fronted by the actor Nino Manfredi in 1985 for a new blend, Crema e Gusto, propelled Lavazza to a 30 per cent share of the market for the stove-top coffee favoured by Italians at home.

Emilio responded similarly quickly to other changes in society. Having become chief executive in 1971 on the death of his father, and then chairman eight years later after that of his uncle, he reacted to a decline in domestic coffee consumption by seeking new opportunities abroad. In 1982 he opened Lavazza's first office in France, followed by Germany and the US. In 1990 came Britain, and then Spain and Portugal, and latterly Brazil. In the Nineties the first of a line of calendars appeared, provocatively photographed by the likes of Helmut Newton and Annie Leibovitz. The one for 1995 starred a scantily-clad Carla Bruni.

Unlike other coffee brands such as Illy and Pascucci, Lavazza has almost no presence in the bars where most Italians take their morning espresso. The only café it operates is on the site of Luigi Lavazza's original shop in Turin. It does, however, have a substantial vending machine business, and in 2007 acquired the second-largest chain of coffee shops in India. When Emilio retired a year later, his company had about 1,600 staff in Italy, 43 laboratories worldwide and, at three quarters of a million sq ft, one of the largest factories in Europe. A private man, who was known only to have ever given one interview, he was appointed to the equivalent of an Italian knighthood in 1991. He was a past president of the Italian food and beverage association, and of the European Coffee Federation.

Emilio Lavazza is survived by his wife, Maria Teresa Rey, and their son and daughter, both of whom now work in the family business.

Emilio Lavazza, coffee merchant, was born in 1932. He died of a heart attack on February 16, 2010, aged 78.