ROLLBACK doesn't work after INSERT INTO newly created destination table
The reason is that that some statements, like CREATE TABLE cause an implicit commit. You can read about them in the documentation: Statements That Cause an Implicit Commit.

So the original sequence of statements:

START TRANSACTION
SHOW TABLES LIKE customers
CREATE TABLE `customers__20150119_14_08_20` LIKE `customers`
INSERT INTO `customers__20150119_14_08_20` SELECT * FROM `customers`
ROLLBACK


will expand into:

START TRANSACTION ;   -- transaction context created
SHOW TABLES LIKE customers ;

COMMIT ;              -- CREATE TABLE forces commit before itself
                      --     (at this point the previous transaction is done.)
START TRANSACTION ;   -- and a new transaction  
CREATE TABLE `customers__20150119_14_08_20` 
    LIKE `customers` ;
COMMIT ;              -- CREATE TABLE forces commit after itself. 
                      -- At this point there's no transaction context

START TRANSACTION ;   --  starts a new transaction
INSERT INTO `customers__20150119_14_08_20` 
    SELECT * FROM `customers` ;
COMMIT ;              -- caused by "autocommit on" setting (guess). 

ROLLBACK ;            -- this rollback HAS NOTHING to undo


The solution would be to start the transaction (or a new one) after the CREATE TABLE statement or use a temporary table.