On Wednesday, Tesla shares soared 3.5% within the trading day.

While that figure doesn’t appear to be too big, it must have made Tesla CEO Elon Musk feel like he’s on top of the world.

See, that 5% uptick is all Tesla needed to overtake Toyota as the world’s largest carmaker.

With its market capitalization climbing up to $207.2 billion, Tesla raced past Toyota’s $201.9 billion valuation for the first time, marking its second gargantuan breakthrough after surpassing German giant Volkswagen in the world’s list of biggest automakers earlier this year.

Even Bigger Than Disney, Coke

Now, the electric car maker is not just breaking barriers in the automotive industry. These recent gains in Tesla’s market cap has even launched the company past other household names like Coca-Cola, Disney, and even payments titan Paypal.

In fact, according to CNN’s latest tally, only 19 companies in the S&P 500 are worth more than the California-made Tesla. 

Now, the logical next milestone for Tesla to target is to actually get on the S&P 500 list. For that, the company has to be more consistently profitable.

For starters, the company has to ramp up production if it wants to catch up to Toyota’s large scale manufacturing. 

During the first quarter of this year, Tesla was able to produce 103,000 vehicles, a mere 4% of Toyota’s total output, which stands at 2.4 million.

Toyota Still Unmatched?

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Tesla currently leads all other car companies in terms of market value, but overall value is a whole other thing.

According to marketing research firm Kantar, Japanese maker Toyota still leads the automotive industry in this year’s Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands.

In fact, Tesla just clinched fourth spot on this list, which takes into account a myriad of factors other than market capitalization. It also looks at how a brand distinguishes itself from its competition through investor appeal and innovative advances.
Tesla has moved up three rungs since the last global brands report, but it has yet to jump past Mercedes-Benz and BMW for the chance to go toe to toe against Toyota.