Your soft drink habit may turn out to be your ticket to prizes big and small. The Coca-Cola Company offers chances to win with participating brands through the My Coke Rewards program (MCR). Before you're ready to recycle that Coke bottle, make sure to follow these steps for your chance to win.

The rewards program allows you to collect points to use for redeeming prizes, enter sweepstakes and instant-win contests and even donate to a school or charity including the Special Olympics and St. Jude's Research Hospital.

Each participating brand has codes on the packaging to collect in order to redeem items. You can find these codes under caps and on the packaging of multi-pack sets of soft drinks. There are 14 participating brands including:

• Coca-Cola


• Coke Zero


• Diet Coke


• Sprite


• Dasani bottled water


• Powerade


• Minute Maid


• Fanta


• Barq's


• Fresca


• Pibb


• Mellow Yello


• Nestea


• Seagram's

Each code is equal to 3 points. You can start redeeming them right away. Some of the sweepstakes only use 1 point for entry. The rewards catalog on the website lists each reward available and how many points you need to redeem it. Some examples of rewards available are magazine subscriptions, movie tickets, headphones, an MP3 player and kitchen items. The sweepstakes opportunities include things like a KitchenAid mixer, a Kindle Fire, a $500 or $10,000 Visa gift card and Caribbean cruise. For many of the drawings you can enter up to 50 times a day.

You need to be a US resident and register in order to participate in the program. You can register with your Facebook account or directly through the MCR website. Just enter the code on the site and the points show up in your account. Also enter through the Facebook site or your mobile phone. You can use the points immediately or let them accumulate. There are also lists of eligible schools and charities at the site if you prefer to donate your points. Visit the My Coke Rewards site for more information. Good luck!