By Chelsey Dulaney 

Coca-Cola Co. posted better-than-expected profit and revenue in its first quarter, despite stiff foreign-exchange headwinds in key overseas markets and a 6% decline in Diet Coke volumes.

Shares of Coke, down 6.9% over the past three months, added 1% to $41.20 in morning trading.

The maker of brands including Sprite soda and Minute Maid orange juice had warned that 2015 would be a challenging year as it works through a plan to cut $3 billion in costs and faces increasingly health-conscious customers.

Chief Executive Muhtar Kent said in a news release Wednesday that the company is beginning to see initial positive indicators from changes to its business.

"However, we continue to view 2015 as a transition year as the benefits from the announced initiatives will take time to fully materialize amidst an uncertain and volatile macroeconomic environment," he said.

Coke said its world-wide soda volumes and noncarbonated beverage volumes both grew 1% in the latest quarter. Growth in its Sprite and Coke Zero brands of 4% and 5%, respectively, helped to offset a 6% drop in Diet Coke volume.

Soda volumes in North American fell 1%, offsetting a 2% increase in noncarbonated beverage volumes. Overall, volume was flat in the division.

In a move that has helped to offset declining soda volumes, Coke raised prices aggressively in the U.S. during the second half of 2014, capitalizing on a rebounding economy, falling unemployment and rising wages.

On a conference call with analysts, Mr. Kent described the company's outlook as "cautious," citing sluggishness in Europe, where volumes edged up 1% overall, and Japan, which logged a low single-digit volume decline in the latest quarter.

Mr. Kent described commodity costs as "stable and benign" and said the company is on track to deliver at least $500 million in savings this year.

Coke, like other companies, is seeing currency fluctuations dent its earnings. Coke generates most of its profit abroad and warned in February that weakening foreign currencies could drag down pretax profit by 7 to 8 percentage points in 2015. Since then, the dollar has strengthened further against key currencies including the Brazilian real and the euro.

Coke unveiled a $3 billion cost-cutting program in October, as the maker of Sprite, Minute Maid and Powerade warned it would miss profit targets after sales slowed across much of the world. The cost-cutting program includes a shift to zero-based budgeting, layoffs and redirecting savings to stepped-up marketing after missing revenue targets two straight years.

Overall, for the period ended April 3, the company posted earnings of $1.56 billion, or 35 cents a share, down from $1.62 billion, or 36 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, per-share earnings were 48 cents.

Revenue inched up 1.3% to $10.71 billion.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had projected 42 cents a share in earnings and $10.66 billion in revenue.

Organic revenue, which strips out foreign currency impacts, grew 8%, driven by concentrate sales growth.

Mike Esterl contributed to this article.

Write to Chelsey Dulaney at Chelsey.Dulaney@wsj.com

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