Many have been performed to decrease the thickness of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles to reduce the manufacturing cost. However, it is difficult to guarantee the mechanical strength under top-loading after decreasing the thickness. This paper investigates the large deformation characteristics of a PET bottle under a compressive load using experimental and finite element analysis (FEA) data. A round 1.65-L bottle is analyzed under a compressive velocity of 5 mm/min with a maximum load of 9,800 N in experiments. The arc length method is used in a nonlinear FEA to understand the buckling phenomenon of the PET bottle. From the analyzed results, a recommendation is made to restrict the top loading to less than 1,208 N, because the first buckling phenomenon occurred at a load of 1,208 N.