Are we at peak speed efficiency for jet airliners at Mach 0.85?
Short answer: Increasing fuel prices would have driven down the most economical speed, but advances in aerodynamics have compensated for that and the maximum cruise Mach number is still at Mach 0.85. But there is a much simpler reason why this Mach 0.85 number seems so immutable.

Please note that we are talking about the maximum cruise Mach number; all airliners will fly more economical at slightly lower Mach numbers between 0.78 and 0.82. 

Now we need to define efficiency. For airliners this is haul capacity per time, and can be expressed by the product of payload, range and speed. When none of the three constituents can be changed without making the product more costly to achieve, you have reached the point of best efficiency.

Engine Technology

The biggest change in the last 50 years was in engine technology. Bypass ratios have increased to values close to 10, the turbine inlet temperature is now 300°C higher than in the early jet age, and electronic control has improved especially the off-design performance of engines. This has made it less attractive to increase flight speed, so the optimum cruise Mach would be lower if no other effects had influenced it.

Another effect is the lower fuel consumption. Early designs had to use a high wing chord to pack enough fuel volume for transoceanic flights. The much lower consumption of modern engines has given them ranges which are more than what is needed to reach every point on earth directly. This made it possible to reduce wing area, thickness and mass, and to save some friction drag, helping fuel economy again. The lower thickness helps to make higher cruise Mach numbers possible.

Aerodynamics

Aerodynamics is the second factor. With the A310 supercritical airfoils were introduced, and they shifted the operating Mach number up because now a limited region of supersonic flow on the wing could be tolerated without a significant rise in drag. However, the benefit from that was used to reduce wing sweep, increase airfoil thickness and to attach bigger fuselages to those wings. In the end, the newer airplanes had the same cruise Mach numbers as their predecessors. Something made Mach 0.85 too attractive to abandon.

A second effect of supercritical airfoils is their blunter nose, which helps to reach a higher maximum lift coefficient. This also contributed to reducing wing chord, because now the wing area could be made smaller for the same landing speed.

The Real Reason

Every new airliner needs to compete with the older models. On fuel economy this is no problem, but speed is also important. A higher cruise Mach number allows  shorter times for connections. Now you have to know that the electronic reservation systems would list connections sorted by flight time, shortest first. When a travel agent wanted to book a flight, he or she would rarely look beyond the first screen and pick one of the first flights listed. If a new type made the flight slip down in the listings, it was a non-seller. This is even true in the times of online bookings: The airlines don't make much profit from the bargain hunters in Economy, their target are the business people flying in Business or First Class. And those still order mostly through travel agencies, so the rules have not changed. This is why that Mach 0.85 speed seems to be so firmly set; flying any faster would drive up fuel consumption disproportionally, and even the newest jets will mostly be flown around Mach 0.82 to Mach 0.84.

Making this speed possible is still a struggle for the design engineers, especially when you consider that larger aircraft would need thicker wings for structural efficiency, but need to be fitted with wings thinner than optimal to let marketing claim a cruise speed of Mach 0.85.