The paper describes some mechanisms and aspects influencing the testing of the cohesion of coated steel reinforcement bars (rebars) with concrete. Cohesion was verified on plain steel rebars with zinc and nickel coatings. One hot-dip zinc coating (Zn HDG) and three galvanic coatings, in particular zinc (Zn G), zinc-nickel (ZnNi) and nickel coating (Ni), were included in the experiment. The main goal of the work was to verify and describe the effect of these surface treatments on the cohesion of rebar with concrete. The evaluation of the coherence of the whole system was carried out according to the international standard RILEM RC 6 (pullout test). To complement the correlation of roughness to the final cohesion, roughness measurements were also performed on all tested surfaces. Furthermore, the paper deals with the ČSN EN 10348-2 standard and points out pitfalls that can make it difficult to design structures with coated steel reinforcement bars. The dependence of cohesion on the roughness of the coating was confirmed in the experiment. It has also been proven that corrosion of zinc in an alkaline environment reduces the cohesion of the coated rebar with concrete and creates a porous contact surface at the interface between the cement paste and the rebar. Due to the high roughness (compared to other surfaces), corrosion of zinc during hydrogen evolution did not affect the results of the adhesion tests for the hot-dip zinc coating, where the adhesion to concrete was higher than that of steel.