[1] The company was founded in the 1890s by William Streich to export bananas and sugar from the northwestern Cortés region of Honduras to international markets.

The company soon ran out of money and was purchased around 1905 by the Russian born Samuel Zemurray, who used it as part of the beginning of his growing banana trade operation.

He discovered that United Fruit, the major importer, was discarding bananas that were ripening earlier than those within the rest of a shipment.

Though information on this early incarnation of the company is scarce, records show that the Hubbard-Zemurray group was involved in at least one case before the Supreme Court of the United States.

[1] Both the Vaccaro firm and Cuyamel were relatively minor players in the banana export market, both dwarfed by the United Fruit Company of Boston.

Even though the three companies were competitive, they maintained a cartel-like cooperation, with joint efforts in advertising and increasing banana agricultural outputs in Honduras.

[5] Regardless of this cooperation, it was the nature of the three companies' competition that led to political discord in Central American states in the early 20th century.

As a repayment for his support, Bonilla also granted Zemurray a concession to build a railroad between the town of Cuyamel, by the coast, and Veracruz, in the interior [6].

[7] There were no more coups in the country through the end of the decade, but Zemurray's Cuyamel Fruit was in fierce competition with Vaccaro and United.

[10] This incident of near-war strained relations between pro-Honduras Cuyamel and pro-Guatemala United, and this tension would not fully cool off until the two companies became one in 1929.

The American Embassy in Honduras went as far as saying, in 1916, that "the territory controlled by the Cuyamel Fruit Company is a state itself, within another state…it houses its employees, cultivates plantations, operates railroads, stations, steamship lines, potable water systems, power plants, commissaries, [and] clubs."

[11] Sales data from 1927 shows that Cuyamel accounted for about 14% of the bananas imported and sold in the United States that year.

[11] In 1929, after the October crash of international financial markets, Zemurray sold Cuyamel to United Fruit in exchange for stock and retired.

[5] Zemurray received a seat on the board of directors of United Fruit after he sold his company, but mismanagement in the face of hard economic times sent the business' valuation falling.

[13] At the end of his tenure, United Fruit was able to motivate the U.S. federal government to back a coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz.