Never underestimate the power of suggestion: On Tuesday, Sotheby's hired waiters with silver trays to offer up tiny glass bottles of soda pop to collectors arriving for its major evening sale of contemporary art. Half an hour later, eight bidders fought over the sale's priciest offering -- Andy Warhol's 1962 soda bottle, "Coca-Cola [4] [Large Coca-Cola]." A telephone bidder won it for $35.3 million, over its $25 million high estimate.

Andy Warhol "Coca-Cola [4] Large Coca-Cola, 1962" Sotheby's

There's a fresh fizz to the contemporary-art market these days that's been largely driven by sales of Pop classics by Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and others. Pop's cheery colors and reassuringly familiar objects such as crumbly pies and red lobsters appeal to jet-setting bidders who want to buy art again but aren't ready to stretch for edgy unknowns.

Overall, Sotheby's Pop works helped boost its $222.4 million total above the house's own $214.4 million high expectations. Sotheby's helped financier Ron Perelman sell Lichtenstein's "Still Life with Lobster" from 1972 to a European telephone bidder for $5.9 million, over its $5 million low estimate. Lichtenstein's frothy blue "Ice Cream Soda" from 1962 also sold for $14 million, just over its $12 million low estimate.

Collectors seemed chipper as well, with real-estate developer Aby Rosen packing into the auction house's Manhattan salesroom alongside former super-agent Michael Ovitz; newsprint magnate Peter Brant and his wife, model Stephanie Seymour; and designer Valentino Garavani, who won an untitled Joan Mitchell abstract for $2.2 million.

But the sale relied heavily on faraway collectors to pick up its priciest pieces, including examples by boom-era favorites Mark Rothko and Francis Bacon. An Asian telephone bidder paid $22.4 million for a lemony, untitled Rothko from 1955 that was being sold by architect Graham Gund. Sotheby's London-based expert Oliver Barker also fielded the $14 million winning telephone bid for Bacon's orange-and-blue "Figure in Movement," which was priced to sell for up to $10 million with fees. (Sale prices include the auction house's commission, which estimate prices omit.)

Willem de Kooning, Montauk III Sotheby's

Another artist who fared well this time around was Gerhard Richter, a German artist known for painting neon-splattered abstracts or black-and-white images that look like fuzzy-focus photographs. Bremen's Stiftung Ludwig-Roselius Museum sold its 1966 Richter, "Matrosen (Sailors)," for $13.2 million, above its $8 million high estimate. Richter's rainbow-colored abstract from 1992, "Abstraktes Bild," also sold for $11.2 million, above its $7 million high estimate.

Overall, 49 of the sale's 54 pieces found buyers, helping the sale achieve 97.1% of its potential value. In another sign that the art market is again stoking the top-that atmosphere that defined the pre-recession boom, records were broken for at least six artists including Urs Fischer, Jim Hodges, Cady Noland, and Julie Mehretu.

Larry Rivers, French Money III Sotheby's

The record-setting work that drew the largest pool of bidders: Pop precursor Larry Rivers's "French Money III." The Bronx-born artist created this cartoon-like image of France's 100-franc note in 1962, two years after that country had to revalue its currency to combat inflation. At least nine bidders chased after the work, with a telephone bidder winning it for $1.1 million, nearly three times its high estimate.

Rival Christie's counters with its sale of post-war and contemporary art on Wednesday.

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