Strong brands enable businesses to generate sales volume and a price premium that improves revenues and margins, attract and retain the best employees and facilitate expansion into new products and markets. Companies with strong brands also lose value less quickly in a recession, and emerge with a sustainable competitive advantage commanding consistently higher share prices. From this perspective, the aim of this paper is to review the brand value chain, to review and discuss the factors that influence customer based brand equity (CBBE) as starting points for the design of successful marketing and brand strategy and to analyze brand financial value based on different calculation methodologies. CBBE and brand value are similar, but not the same. Very often scholars and practitioners mix these two terms and there is as well a dose of confusion around how they differ. This paper defines their exact meaning and interrelation. Comparative analysis of the top 10 globally ranked brands based on 4 different brand value methodologies in published reports of commercial research organization was made in order to discuss the value of brands based on their industry category, country of origin and brand value change year over year. The analysis of the top 10 global brands in 2018 clearly showed brands and brand value concentration in the USA, leadership of technology and e-commerce category industry brands, and identified Chinese brands as biggest brand value raisers year over year, 2018 vs. 2017. It also shows the importance of managing strong brand equity as base for high brand value.