When Bacardi family members gather over the next week to celebrate the company’s 150th anniversary, they will crack open limited-edition, $2,000 bottles of an aged rum blend made especially for the occasion.

A fitting toast would celebrate how far the company has come, particularly in the last two decades. During that time Bacardi Limited has transformed itself from a family-owned company known almost exclusively for its namesake rum to a multi-branded spirits company featuring a collection of well-known premium brands ranging from vodka to gin, scotch and tequila.

The expansion wasn’t just a matter of growing market share. In a shark-like global marketplace, Bacardi needed to grow if it wanted to survive.

“We saw consolidation happening and with a single brand it would have been very difficult for us to compete,” said Manuel Cutillas, a Bacardi family member and shareholder. Cutillas lead the first phase of the diversification as chairman and chief executive during the 1990s. “We had to grow. Had we not done that we would have found ourselves having to sell or merge with a larger company.”

Bacardi learned that lesson the hard way during the 1980s and early 1990s. As rum sales declined amid the growing popularity of premium vodkas and tequilas, Bacardi rum lost its rank as the top selling spirit in the world. When consolidation swept through the industry, the company struggled to remain competitive with industry leader Diageo and the fast-growing Pernod Ricard.

The company’s move toward diversification began in 1992 with the acquisition of Martini & Rossi, then picked up speed with the 1998 acquisition of Dewar’s scotch and Bombay Sapphire gin. In 2002, it added Cazadores Tequila. The crown jewel came in 2004 when the company spent $2 billion to buy Grey Goose vodka, the world’s top super premium vodka. That deal made Bacardi a player in the hottest beverage category, where it had long been missing in action.

Initially, some industry watchers were skeptical about the growth potential of the new brands.

“The doubters have been proven wrong,” said David Fleming, executive editor of Impact, an alcoholic beverage industry trade publication. “There were some people who thought the only thing Bacardi knows is rum. They’ve shown that they’re real brand builders.”

Internally, the Grey Goose acquisition also seemed to silence the rumblings that had been brewing for more than a decade about Bacardi’s potential transformation from a private company to a publicly traded one. The option was seen as way to raise expansion capital.

Chairman Facundo L. Bacardi said the family values its independence and has no intention of going public. Bacardi has fewer than 500 shareholders; all but a handful are family members. Today, there are eight generations of Bacardi family members.

“There are plenty of acquisitions out there that we can do without resorting to being a publicly-traded entity,” said Facundo Bacardi, the great, great grandson of founder Don Facundo Bacardi Massó and one of the company’s largest shareholders. “You don’t realize how hard it is to manage a company quarter-to-quarter and fiscal year-to-fiscal year. We don’t think that way. Some of our plans go out 10 years. We take a long-term view on a number of initiatives.”