  We present an investigation of the pion's electromagnetic form factor
F_{\pi}(Q^2) in the spacelike region utilizing two new ingredients: (i) a
double-humped, endpoint-suppressed pion distribution amplitude derived before
via QCD sum rules with nonlocal condensates--found to comply at the 1\sigma
level with the CLEO data on the $\pi\gamma$ transition--and (ii) analytic
perturbation theory at the level of parton amplitudes for hadronic reactions.
The computation of F_{\pi}(Q^2) within this approach is performed at NLO of QCD
perturbation theory (standard and analytic), including the evolution of the
pion distribution amplitude at the same order. We consider the NLO corrections
to the form factor in the \bar{MS} scheme with various renormalization scale
settings and also in the \alpha_V-scheme. We find that using standard
perturbation theory, the size of the NLO corrections is quite sensitive to the
adopted renormalization scheme and scale setting. The main results of our
analysis are the following: (i) Replacing the QCD coupling and its powers by
their analytic images, both dependencies are diminished and the predictions for
the pion form factor are quasi scheme and scale-setting independent. (ii) The
magnitude of the factorized pion form factor, calculated with the
aforementioned pion distribution amplitude, is only slightly larger than the
result obtained with the asymptotic one in all considered schemes. (iii)
Including the soft pion form factor via local duality and ensuring the Ward
identity at Q^2=0, we present predictions that are in remarkably good agreement
with the existing experimental data both in trend and magnitude.
