1 Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

PPG's name is a relic: it stands for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, the company founded in 1883 that became America's first successful plate glass maker. Glass built the company, but paint made it famous — PPG is now one of the world's two largest coatings companies, and its paints and finishes coat everything from cars and airplanes to bridges and smartphone screens. The coatings business spans three worlds: automotive OEM coatings (the factory paint on millions of new cars, where PPG and rival BASF dominate), industrial coatings (powder coatings, container coatings, and the paints on appliances and electronics), and architectural coatings (the paints sold under the PPG and Comex brands for homes and buildings). Its aerospace coatings are specified on aircraft worldwide, and its optical materials business makes the lens materials in eyeglasses. With about 52,000 employees and annual revenue near US$18 billion, PPG has sold its glass businesses entirely (the last in 2016), completing a century-long transformation from glassmaker to pure coatings company. For manufacturers, PPG's pitch is color science plus industrial reliability: the paint that protects a car for a decade or a chemical plant for decades longer.