Simple survival is the first strategy that most managers come up with when confronting a financial crisis. The savviest managers, however, realize that a period of great uncertainty, with financial and competitive landscapes changing almost overnight, can be the ideal time to make important strategic gains.

Douglas Daft, Coca-Cola’s chief executive, knows the feeling. In 1997, as head of the company’s Asian operations, he watched capital investment turn fickle and devaluations deepen while a financial storm swept across much of Asia. As panic spread, Daft summoned his executives to a series of workshops about how Coca-Cola could capture new growth opportunities and emerge strengthened from the trauma. After all, the company had achieved one of its greatest breakthroughs in international markets at the end of World War II, when it discovered new opportunities in the broken landscape of Western Europe.

Daft emerged with a focus on acquisition opportunities that, he calculated, would be unchained by the turmoil. Over the next few years, Coca-Cola bought a bottling business in South Korea, giving the company better access to the mom-and-pop retail stores there, and gained better access in China, Japan, and Malaysia. The company abandoned its country-defined market perspective in favor...