John Stith Pemberton, a Confederate colonel wounded in the American Civil War, began his quest to create Coca-Cola as a substitute for the morphine that had become his addiction. In 1885, at his Eagle Drug and Chemical House in Columbus, Georgia, he registered Pemberton's French Wine Coca nerve tonic, a drink inspired by the success of Vin Mariani, a French-Corsican coca wine. Pemberton's recipe included the African kola nut, the beverage's source of caffeine, and was marketed as a cure for many diseases, including morphine addiction, indigestion, nerve disorders, headaches, and impotence. The first sales of Coca-Cola occurred at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on the 8th of May 1886, where it initially sold for five cents a glass. By 1888, three versions of Coca-Cola, sold by three separate businesses, were on the market, with a co-partnership formed on the 14th of January 1888, between Pemberton and four Atlanta businessmen: J.C. Mayfield, A.O. Murphey, C.O. Mullahy, and E.H. Bloodworth. John Pemberton died suddenly on the 16th of August 1888, leaving his son Charley, an alcoholic and opium addict, to manage the business.
The Man Who Bought The Name
Asa Griggs Candler, a businessman who had acquired a one-third interest in the formula of Coca-Cola on the 14th of April 1888, moved swiftly to gain full control of the entire Coca-Cola operation after John Pemberton's death. Candler negotiated with Margaret Dozier and her brother Woolfolk Walker a full payment amounting to $1,000, which all agreed Candler could pay off with a series of notes over a specified time span. By the 1st of May 1899, Candler was claiming full ownership of the Coca-Cola beverage, with a total investment outlay by Candler for the drink enterprise over the years amounting to $2,300. In 1892, Candler set out to incorporate a second company, the Coca-Cola Company (the modern corporation). When Candler had the earliest records of the Coca-Cola Company destroyed in 1910, the action was claimed to have been made during a move to new corporation offices around this time. On the 12th of September 1919, Coca-Cola Co. was purchased by a group of investors led by Ernest Woodruff's Trust Company for $25 million and reincorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law. The company publicly offered 500,000 shares of the company for $40 a share. In 1923, his son Robert W. Woodruff was elected President of the company. Woodruff expanded the company and brought Coca-Cola to the rest of the world.The Bottle That Changed Everything
The Coca-Cola bottle, called the contour bottle within the company, was created by bottle designer Earl R. Dean and Coca-Cola's general counsel, Harold Hirsch. In 1915, the Coca-Cola Company was represented by their general counsel to launch a competition among its bottle suppliers as well as any competition entrants to create a new bottle for their beverage that would distinguish it from other beverage bottles, a bottle which a person could recognize even if they felt it in the dark, and so shaped that, even if broken, a person could tell at a glance what it was. Chapman J. Root, president of the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, turned the project over to members of his supervisory staff, including company auditor T. Clyde Edwards, plant superintendent Alexander Samuelsson, and Earl R. Dean, bottle designer and supervisor of the bottle molding room. Root and his subordinates decided to base the bottle's design on one of the soda's two ingredients, the coca leaf or the kola nut, but were unaware of what either ingredient looked like. Dean and Edwards went to the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library and were unable to find any information about coca or kola. Instead, Dean was inspired by a picture of the gourd-shaped cocoa pod in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Dean made a rough sketch of the pod and returned to the plant to show Root. He explained to Root how he could transform the shape of the pod into a bottle. Root gave Dean his approval. Faced with the upcoming scheduled maintenance of the mold-making machinery, over the next 24 hours, Dean sketched out a concept drawing, which was approved by Root the next morning. Chapman Root approved the prototype bottle, and a design patent was issued on the bottle in November 1915. The prototype never made it to production since its middle diameter was larger than its base, making it unstable on conveyor belts. Dean resolved this issue by decreasing the bottle's middle diameter. During the 1916 bottler's convention, Dean's contour bottle was chosen over other entries and was on the market the same year. By 1920, the contour bottle became the standard for the Coca-Cola Company. A revised version was also patented in 1923. Because the Patent Office releases the Patent Gazette on Tuesday, the bottle was patented on the 25th of December 1923, and was nicknamed the Christmas bottle. Today, the contour Coca-Cola bottle is one of the most recognized packages on the planet. As a reward for his efforts, Dean was offered a choice between a $500 bonus or a lifetime job at The Root Glass Company. He chose the lifetime job and kept it until the Owens-Illinois Glass Company bought out The Root Glass Company in the mid-1930s. Dean went on to work in other Midwestern glass factories. Raymond Loewy updated the design in 1955 to accommodate larger formats.The Formula That Vanished
The exact formula for Coca-Cola's natural flavorings is a trade secret. The original copy of the formula was held in Truist Financial's main vault in Atlanta for 86 years. Its predecessor, the Trust Company, was the underwriter for the Coca-Cola Company's initial public offering in 1919. On the 8th of December 2011, the original secret formula was moved from the vault at SunTrust Banks into a new vault; this vault will be on display for visitors to its World of Coca-Cola museum in downtown Atlanta. According to Snopes, a popular myth states that only two executives have access to the formula, with each executive having only half the formula. However, several sources state that while Coca-Cola does have a rule restricting access to only two executives, each of them knows the entire formula, and that persons other than the prescribed duo have known the formulation process. On the 11th of February 2011, Ira Glass said on his PRI radio show, This American Life, that his staffers had found a recipe in Everett Beal's Recipe Book, reproduced in the 28th of February 1979 issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that they believed was either Pemberton's original formula for Coca-Cola or a version that he made either before or after the product hit the market in 1886. The formula basically matched the one found in Pemberton's diary. Coca-Cola archivist Phil Mooney acknowledged that the recipe could be a precursor to the formula used in the original 1886 product, but emphasized that Pemberton's original formula is not the same as the one used in the modern product. Joya Williams, a secretary to the global brand director at Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters, stole the formula. Williams, along with her accomplices Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney, conspired to sell the confidential trade secret to Pepsi for US$1.5 million. However, Pepsi did not capitalize on the opportunity and instead reported the illegal offer to Coca-Cola and the FBI. The FBI setup a sting operation posing as Pepsi executives, leading to the arrest of Williams and her accomplices. Public prosecutor David Nahmias praised Pepsi for doing the right thing: They did so because trade secrets are important to everybody in the business community. They realise that if their trade secrets are violated, they all suffer, the market suffers and the community suffers.The Cocaine And The Caffeine
When launched, Coca-Cola's two key ingredients were cocaine and caffeine. The cocaine was derived from the coca leaf and the caffeine from kola nut, also spelled cola nut at the time, leading to the name Coca-Cola. Pemberton called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup, approximately 37 g/L, a significant dose; in 1891, Candler claimed his formula, altered extensively from Pemberton's original, contained only a tenth of this amount. Coca-Cola once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. For comparison, a typical dose or line of cocaine is 50, 75 mg. In 1903, the fresh coca leaves were removed from the formula. After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using spent leaves, the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with trace levels of cocaine. Since then, by 1929, Coca-Cola has used a cocaine-free coca leaf extract. Today, that extract is prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey, the only manufacturing plant authorized by the federal government to import and process coca leaves, which it obtains from Peru and Bolivia. Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it then sells to Mallinckrodt, the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medicinal use. Long after the syrup had ceased to contain any significant amount of cocaine, in North Carolina dope remained a common colloquialism for Coca-Cola, and dope-wagons were trucks that transported it. The kola nut acts as a flavoring and the original source of caffeine in Coca-Cola. It contains about 2.0 to 3.5% caffeine, and has a bitter flavor. In 1911, the US government sued in United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, hoping to force the Coca-Cola Company to remove caffeine from its formula. The court found that the syrup, when diluted as directed, would result in a beverage containing 1.21 grains, or 78.4 mg, of caffeine per serving. The case was decided in favor of the Coca-Cola Company at the district court, but subsequently in 1912, the US Pure Food and Drug Act was amended, adding caffeine to the list of habit-forming and deleterious substances which must be listed on a product's label. In 1913 the case was appealed to the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, where the ruling was affirmed, but then appealed again in 1916 to the Supreme Court, where the government effectively won as a new trial was ordered. The company then voluntarily reduced the amount of caffeine in its product, and offered to pay the government's legal costs to settle and avoid further litigation. Coca-Cola contains 34 mg of caffeine per 12 US fluid ounces, or 22.7 mg per serving.The Cola Wars And The New Coke
During the 1950s the term cola wars emerged, describing the on-going battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi for supremacy in the soft drink industry. Coca-Cola and Pepsi were competing with new products, global expansion, US marketing initiatives and sport sponsorships. In 1985, Coca-Cola, amid much publicity, changed the formula of the drink with New Coke. Follow-up taste tests revealed most consumers preferred the taste of New Coke to both old Coke and Pepsi but Coca-Cola management was unprepared for the public's nostalgia for the old drink, leading to a backlash. The company gave in to protests and returned to the old formula under the name Coca-Cola Classic, on the 10th of July 1985. New Coke remained available and was renamed Coke II in 1992; it was discontinued in 2002. In 2019, New Coke was re-introduced to the market to promote the third season of the Netflix original series, Stranger Things. In 1986, the Coca-Cola Company merged with two of their bottling operators, owned by JTL Corporation and BCI Holding Corporation, to form Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. (CCE). In December 1991, Coca-Cola Enterprises merged with the Johnston Coca-Cola Bottling Group, Inc. In 1974 Coca-Cola switched over to high-fructose corn syrup because of the elevated prices. Sugar prices spiked in the 1970s because of Soviet demand/hoarding and possibly manipulation of the futures contracts market. The Soviet Union was the largest producer of sugar at the time. In 1982, the Coca-Cola Company purchased Columbia Pictures, and began inserting Coke-product images into many of its films. After a few early successes during Coca-Cola's ownership, Columbia began to underperform, and the studio was sold to Sony in 1989. In 1999, the Coca-Cola Company introduced the Coke Card, a loyalty program that offered deals on items like clothes, entertainment and food when the cardholder purchased a Coca-Cola Classic. The scheme was cancelled after three years, with a Coca-Cola spokesperson declining to state why. The company then introduced another loyalty campaign in 2006, My Coke Rewards. This allows consumers to earn points by entering codes from specially marked packages of Coca-Cola products into a website. These points can be redeemed for various prizes or sweepstakes entries.The Global Symbol And The Local Rivals
Coca-Cola has been sold outside the United States since as early as the turn of the 20th century, as the drink was first sold in Britain on the 31st of August 1900 and the Cuba Libre, a mix between Coca-Cola and rum, was created in Havana shortly after the Spanish, American War of 1898. However, the international reach of the product became mostly limited to North and Central America, the Caribbean, Western Europe and parts of Asia until the 1940s, when the brand was introduced throughout South America and then Europe after the end of World War II. Fanta was initially conceived by the German Coca-Cola subsidiary as an emergency replacement as the wartime trade embargo prevented the import of syrup. As a result, Coca-Cola eventually became regarded as one of the major symbols of American soft power as well as of globalization. Since it announced its intention to begin distribution in Myanmar in June 2012, Coca-Cola has been officially available in every country in the world except Cuba, where it stopped being available officially since 1960, ironically, Coca-Cola's first bottling plant outside the United States was established there in 1906, and North Korea. However, it is reported to be available in both countries as a grey import. Coca-Cola suspended its operations in Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Coca-Cola has been a point of legal discussion in the Middle East. In the early 20th century, a fatwa was created in Egypt to discuss the question of whether Muslims were permitted to drink Coca-Cola and Pepsi cola. The fatwa states: According to the Muslim Hanefite, Shafiite, etc., the rule in Islamic law of forbidding or allowing foods and beverages is based on the presumption that such things are permitted unless it can be shown that they are forbidden on the basis of the Qur'an. The Muslim jurists stated that, unless the Qur'an specifically prohibits the consumption of a particular product, it is permissible to consume. Another clause was discussed, whereby the same rules apply if a person is unaware of the condition or ingredients of the item in question. Coca-Cola first entered the Chinese market in the 1920s with no localized representation of its name. While the company researched a satisfactory translation, local shopkeepers created their own. These produced the desired ko-ka ko-la sound, but with odd meanings such as female horse fastened with wax or bite the wax tadpole. In the 1930s, the company settled on the name Kěkòu Kělè, taking into account the effects of syllable and meaning translations. The phrase means roughly to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice. The story introduction from Coca-Cola mentions that Chiang Yee provided the new localized name, but there are also sources that the localized name appeared before 1935, or that it was given by someone named Jerome T. Lieu who studied at Columbia University in New York. Coca-Cola's first Taiwanese factory was built in 1957. At the time, a prohibition on the drink was in place and The Coca-Cola Company was permitted to sell only to people working for American agencies, such as the United States Armed Forces. The ban was formally lifted in 1966, and Coca-Cola became legally and readily available to Taiwanese consumers in 1968. In South and Central America Kola Real, also known as Big Cola, is a growing competitor to Coca-Cola. On the French island of Corsica, Corsica Cola, made by brewers of the local Pietra beer, is a growing competitor to Coca-Cola. In the French region of Brittany, Breizh Cola is available. In Peru, Inca Kola outsells Coca-Cola, which led the Coca-Cola Company to purchase the brand in 1999. In Sweden, Julmust outsells Coca-Cola during the Christmas season. In Scotland, the locally produced Irn-Bru was more popular than Coca-Cola until 2005, when Coca-Cola and Diet Coke began to outpace its sales. In the former East Germany, Vita Cola, invented during communist rule, is gaining popularity. While Coca-Cola does not have the majority of the market share in India, The Coca-Cola Company's other brands like Thums Up and Sprite perform well. The Coca-Cola Company purchased Thums Up in 1993 when they re-entered the Indian market. In 2021, Coca-Cola petitioned to cancel registrations for the marks Thums Up and Limca issued to Meenaxi Enterprise, Inc. based on misrepresentation of source. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board concluded that Meenaxi engaged in blatant misuse in a manner calculated to trade on the goodwill and reputation of Coca-Cola in an attempt to confuse consumers in the United States that its Thums Up and Limca marks were licensed or produced by the source of the same types of cola and lemon-lime soda sold under these marks for decades in India.The Red Suit And The Plastic Problem
Coca-Cola's advertising has significantly affected American culture, and it is frequently credited with inventing the modern image of Santa Claus as an old man in a red-and-white suit. Although the company did start using the red-and-white Santa image in the 1930s, with its winter advertising campaigns illustrated by Haddon Sundblom, the motif was already common. Coca-Cola was not even the first soft drink company to use the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising: White Rock Beverages used Santa in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923, after first using him to sell mineral water in 1915. The White Rock Collectors Association, Did White Rock or The Coca-Cola Company create the modern Santa Claus Advertisement? , whiterocking.org, 2001. Retrieved the 19th of January 2007. White Rock Beverages, Coca-Cola's Santa Claus: Not The Real Thing! , BevNET.com, the 18th of December 2006. Retrieved the 19th of January 2007. Before Santa Claus, Coca-Cola relied on images of smartly dressed young women to sell its beverages. Coca-Cola's first such advertisement appeared in 1895, featuring the young Bostonian actress Hilda Clark as its spokeswoman. 1941 saw the first use of the nickname Coke as an official trademark for the product, with a series of advertisements informing consumers that Coke means Coca-Cola. In 1971, a song from a Coca-Cola commercial called I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, produced by Billy Davis, became a hit single. In 1995, the Holidays are coming! advertisement featured a train of red delivery trucks, emblazoned with the Coca-Cola name and decorated with Christmas lights, driving through a snowy landscape and causing everything that they pass to light up and people to watch as they pass through. The advertisement fell into disuse in 2001, as the Coca-Cola Company restructured its advertising campaigns so that advertising around the world was produced locally in each country, rather than centrally in the company's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2007, the company brought back the campaign after, according to the company, many consumers telephoned its information center saying that they considered it to mark the beginning of Christmas. The advertisement was created by US advertising agency Doner, and has been part of the company's global advertising campaign for many years. In 2011, Coca-Cola launched a campaign for the Indian holiday Diwali. The campaign included commercials, a song, and an integration with Shah Rukh Khan's film Ra.One. In November 2024, Coca-Cola released three short AI-generated videos as its Christmas ads, reviving the original 1995 Holidays are Coming commercials. The ads were created by three AI studios: Secret Level, Silverside AI, and the Wild Card. Upon its release, the commercials drew backlash on social media, including criticism from Alex Hirsch, the creator of Gravity Falls. The company defended the ads, writing to The New York Times Coca-Cola will always remain dedicated to creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology. The next year, in November 2025, Coca-Cola released another artificial intelligence commercial, executives claiming that this time it is more different from last year's. In 2019, BreakFreeFromPlastic named Coca-Cola the single biggest plastic polluter in the world. After 72,541 volunteers collected 476,423 pieces of plastic waste from around where they lived, a total of 11,732 pieces were found to be labeled with a Coca-Cola brand, including the Dasani, Sprite, and Fanta brands, in 37 countries across four continents. At the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Coca-Cola's head of sustainability, Bea Perez, said customers like them because they reseal and are lightweight, and business won't be in business if we don't accommodate consumers. In February 2022, Coca-Cola announced that it will aim to make 25 percent of its packaging reusable by 2030. In February 2021, Coca-Cola received criticism after a video of a training session, which told employees to try to be less white, was leaked by an employee. The session also said in order to beJohn Stith Pemberton, a Confederate colonel wounded in the American Civil War, began his quest to create Coca-Cola as a substitute for the morphine that had become his addiction. In 1885, at his Eagle Drug and Chemical House in Columbus, Georgia, he registered Pemberton's French Wine Coca nerve tonic, a drink inspired by the success of Vin Mariani, a French-Corsican coca wine. Pemberton's recipe included the African kola nut, the beverage's source of caffeine, and was marketed as a cure for many diseases, including morphine addiction, indigestion, nerve disorders, headaches, and impotence. The first sales of Coca-Cola occurred at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on the 8th of May 1886, where it initially sold for five cents a glass. By 1888, three versions of Coca-Cola, sold by three separate businesses, were on the market, with a co-partnership formed on the 14th of January 1888, between Pemberton and four Atlanta businessmen: J.C. Mayfield, A.O. Murphey, C.O. Mullahy, and E.H. Bloodworth. John Pemberton died suddenly on the 16th of August 1888, leaving his son Charley, an alcoholic and opium addict, to manage the business.
The Man Who Bought The Name
Asa Griggs Candler, a businessman who had acquired a one-third interest in the formula of Coca-Cola on the 14th of April 1888, moved swiftly to gain full control of the entire Coca-Cola operation after John Pemberton's death. Candler negotiated with Margaret Dozier and her brother Woolfolk Walker a full payment amounting to $1,000, which all agreed Candler could pay off with a series of notes over a specified time span. By the 1st of May 1899, Candler was claiming full ownership of the Coca-Cola beverage, with a total investment outlay by Candler for the drink enterprise over the years amounting to $2,300. In 1892, Candler set out to incorporate a second company, the Coca-Cola Company (the modern corporation). When Candler had the earliest records of the Coca-Cola Company destroyed in 1910, the action was claimed to have been made during a move to new corporation offices around this time. On the 12th of September 1919, Coca-Cola Co. was purchased by a group of investors led by Ernest Woodruff's Trust Company for $25 million and reincorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law. The company publicly offered 500,000 shares of the company for $40 a share. In 1923, his son Robert W. Woodruff was elected President of the company. Woodruff expanded the company and brought Coca-Cola to the rest of the world.
The Bottle That Changed Everything
The Coca-Cola bottle, called the contour bottle within the company, was created by bottle designer Earl R. Dean and Coca-Cola's general counsel, Harold Hirsch. In 1915, the Coca-Cola Company was represented by their general counsel to launch a competition among its bottle suppliers as well as any competition entrants to create a new bottle for their beverage that would distinguish it from other beverage bottles, a bottle which a person could recognize even if they felt it in the dark, and so shaped that, even if broken, a person could tell at a glance what it was. Chapman J. Root, president of the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, turned the project over to members of his supervisory staff, including company auditor T. Clyde Edwards, plant superintendent Alexander Samuelsson, and Earl R. Dean, bottle designer and supervisor of the bottle molding room. Root and his subordinates decided to base the bottle's design on one of the soda's two ingredients, the coca leaf or the kola nut, but were unaware of what either ingredient looked like. Dean and Edwards went to the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library and were unable to find any information about coca or kola. Instead, Dean was inspired by a picture of the gourd-shaped cocoa pod in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Dean made a rough sketch of the pod and returned to the plant to show Root. He explained to Root how he could transform the shape of the pod into a bottle. Root gave Dean his approval. Faced with the upcoming scheduled maintenance of the mold-making machinery, over the next 24 hours, Dean sketched out a concept drawing, which was approved by Root the next morning. Chapman Root approved the prototype bottle, and a design patent was issued on the bottle in November 1915. The prototype never made it to production since its middle diameter was larger than its base, making it unstable on conveyor belts. Dean resolved this issue by decreasing the bottle's middle diameter. During the 1916 bottler's convention, Dean's contour bottle was chosen over other entries and was on the market the same year. By 1920, the contour bottle became the standard for the Coca-Cola Company. A revised version was also patented in 1923. Because the Patent Office releases the Patent Gazette on Tuesday, the bottle was patented on the 25th of December 1923, and was nicknamed the Christmas bottle. Today, the contour Coca-Cola bottle is one of the most recognized packages on the planet. As a reward for his efforts, Dean was offered a choice between a $500 bonus or a lifetime job at The Root Glass Company. He chose the lifetime job and kept it until the Owens-Illinois Glass Company bought out The Root Glass Company in the mid-1930s. Dean went on to work in other Midwestern glass factories. Raymond Loewy updated the design in 1955 to accommodate larger formats.
The Formula That Vanished
The exact formula for Coca-Cola's natural flavorings is a trade secret. The original copy of the formula was held in Truist Financial's main vault in Atlanta for 86 years. Its predecessor, the Trust Company, was the underwriter for the Coca-Cola Company's initial public offering in 1919. On the 8th of December 2011, the original secret formula was moved from the vault at SunTrust Banks into a new vault; this vault will be on display for visitors to its World of Coca-Cola museum in downtown Atlanta. According to Snopes, a popular myth states that only two executives have access to the formula, with each executive having only half the formula. However, several sources state that while Coca-Cola does have a rule restricting access to only two executives, each of them knows the entire formula, and that persons other than the prescribed duo have known the formulation process. On the 11th of February 2011, Ira Glass said on his PRI radio show, This American Life, that his staffers had found a recipe in Everett Beal's Recipe Book, reproduced in the 28th of February 1979 issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that they believed was either Pemberton's original formula for Coca-Cola or a version that he made either before or after the product hit the market in 1886. The formula basically matched the one found in Pemberton's diary. Coca-Cola archivist Phil Mooney acknowledged that the recipe could be a precursor to the formula used in the original 1886 product, but emphasized that Pemberton's original formula is not the same as the one used in the modern product. Joya Williams, a secretary to the global brand director at Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters, stole the formula. Williams, along with her accomplices Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney, conspired to sell the confidential trade secret to Pepsi for US$1.5 million. However, Pepsi did not capitalize on the opportunity and instead reported the illegal offer to Coca-Cola and the FBI. The FBI setup a sting operation posing as Pepsi executives, leading to the arrest of Williams and her accomplices. Public prosecutor David Nahmias praised Pepsi for doing the right thing: They did so because trade secrets are important to everybody in the business community. They realise that if their trade secrets are violated, they all suffer, the market suffers and the community suffers.
The Cocaine And The Caffeine
When launched, Coca-Cola's two key ingredients were cocaine and caffeine. The cocaine was derived from the coca leaf and the caffeine from kola nut, also spelled cola nut at the time, leading to the name Coca-Cola. Pemberton called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup, approximately 37 g/L, a significant dose; in 1891, Candler claimed his formula, altered extensively from Pemberton's original, contained only a tenth of this amount. Coca-Cola once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. For comparison, a typical dose or line of cocaine is 50, 75 mg. In 1903, the fresh coca leaves were removed from the formula. After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using spent leaves, the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with trace levels of cocaine. Since then, by 1929, Coca-Cola has used a cocaine-free coca leaf extract. Today, that extract is prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey, the only manufacturing plant authorized by the federal government to import and process coca leaves, which it obtains from Peru and Bolivia. Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it then sells to Mallinckrodt, the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medicinal use. Long after the syrup had ceased to contain any significant amount of cocaine, in North Carolina dope remained a common colloquialism for Coca-Cola, and dope-wagons were trucks that transported it. The kola nut acts as a flavoring and the original source of caffeine in Coca-Cola. It contains about 2.0 to 3.5% caffeine, and has a bitter flavor. In 1911, the US government sued in United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola, hoping to force the Coca-Cola Company to remove caffeine from its formula. The court found that the syrup, when diluted as directed, would result in a beverage containing 1.21 grains, or 78.4 mg, of caffeine per serving. The case was decided in favor of the Coca-Cola Company at the district court, but subsequently in 1912, the US Pure Food and Drug Act was amended, adding caffeine to the list of habit-forming and deleterious substances which must be listed on a product's label. In 1913 the case was appealed to the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, where the ruling was affirmed, but then appealed again in 1916 to the Supreme Court, where the government effectively won as a new trial was ordered. The company then voluntarily reduced the amount of caffeine in its product, and offered to pay the government's legal costs to settle and avoid further litigation. Coca-Cola contains 34 mg of caffeine per 12 US fluid ounces, or 22.7 mg per serving.
The Cola Wars And The New Coke
During the 1950s the term cola wars emerged, describing the on-going battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi for supremacy in the soft drink industry. Coca-Cola and Pepsi were competing with new products, global expansion, US marketing initiatives and sport sponsorships. In 1985, Coca-Cola, amid much publicity, changed the formula of the drink with New Coke. Follow-up taste tests revealed most consumers preferred the taste of New Coke to both old Coke and Pepsi but Coca-Cola management was unprepared for the public's nostalgia for the old drink, leading to a backlash. The company gave in to protests and returned to the old formula under the name Coca-Cola Classic, on the 10th of July 1985. New Coke remained available and was renamed Coke II in 1992; it was discontinued in 2002. In 2019, New Coke was re-introduced to the market to promote the third season of the Netflix original series, Stranger Things. In 1986, the Coca-Cola Company merged with two of their bottling operators, owned by JTL Corporation and BCI Holding Corporation, to form Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. (CCE). In December 1991, Coca-Cola Enterprises merged with the Johnston Coca-Cola Bottling Group, Inc. In 1974 Coca-Cola switched over to high-fructose corn syrup because of the elevated prices. Sugar prices spiked in the 1970s because of Soviet demand/hoarding and possibly manipulation of the futures contracts market. The Soviet Union was the largest producer of sugar at the time. In 1982, the Coca-Cola Company purchased Columbia Pictures, and began inserting Coke-product images into many of its films. After a few early successes during Coca-Cola's ownership, Columbia began to underperform, and the studio was sold to Sony in 1989. In 1999, the Coca-Cola Company introduced the Coke Card, a loyalty program that offered deals on items like clothes, entertainment and food when the cardholder purchased a Coca-Cola Classic. The scheme was cancelled after three years, with a Coca-Cola spokesperson declining to state why. The company then introduced another loyalty campaign in 2006, My Coke Rewards. This allows consumers to earn points by entering codes from specially marked packages of Coca-Cola products into a website. These points can be redeemed for various prizes or sweepstakes entries.
The Global Symbol And The Local Rivals
Coca-Cola has been sold outside the United States since as early as the turn of the 20th century, as the drink was first sold in Britain on the 31st of August 1900 and the Cuba Libre, a mix between Coca-Cola and rum, was created in Havana shortly after the Spanish, American War of 1898. However, the international reach of the product became mostly limited to North and Central America, the Caribbean, Western Europe and parts of Asia until the 1940s, when the brand was introduced throughout South America and then Europe after the end of World War II. Fanta was initially conceived by the German Coca-Cola subsidiary as an emergency replacement as the wartime trade embargo prevented the import of syrup. As a result, Coca-Cola eventually became regarded as one of the major symbols of American soft power as well as of globalization. Since it announced its intention to begin distribution in Myanmar in June 2012, Coca-Cola has been officially available in every country in the world except Cuba, where it stopped being available officially since 1960, ironically, Coca-Cola's first bottling plant outside the United States was established there in 1906, and North Korea. However, it is reported to be available in both countries as a grey import. Coca-Cola suspended its operations in Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Coca-Cola has been a point of legal discussion in the Middle East. In the early 20th century, a fatwa was created in Egypt to discuss the question of whether Muslims were permitted to drink Coca-Cola and Pepsi cola. The fatwa states: According to the Muslim Hanefite, Shafiite, etc., the rule in Islamic law of forbidding or allowing foods and beverages is based on the presumption that such things are permitted unless it can be shown that they are forbidden on the basis of the Qur'an. The Muslim jurists stated that, unless the Qur'an specifically prohibits the consumption of a particular product, it is permissible to consume. Another clause was discussed, whereby the same rules apply if a person is unaware of the condition or ingredients of the item in question. Coca-Cola first entered the Chinese market in the 1920s with no localized representation of its name. While the company researched a satisfactory translation, local shopkeepers created their own. These produced the desired ko-ka ko-la sound, but with odd meanings such as female horse fastened with wax or bite the wax tadpole. In the 1930s, the company settled on the name Kěkòu Kělè, taking into account the effects of syllable and meaning translations. The phrase means roughly to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice. The story introduction from Coca-Cola mentions that Chiang Yee provided the new localized name, but there are also sources that the localized name appeared before 1935, or that it was given by someone named Jerome T. Lieu who studied at Columbia University in New York. Coca-Cola's first Taiwanese factory was built in 1957. At the time, a prohibition on the drink was in place and The Coca-Cola Company was permitted to sell only to people working for American agencies, such as the United States Armed Forces. The ban was formally lifted in 1966, and Coca-Cola became legally and readily available to Taiwanese consumers in 1968. In South and Central America Kola Real, also known as Big Cola, is a growing competitor to Coca-Cola. On the French island of Corsica, Corsica Cola, made by brewers of the local Pietra beer, is a growing competitor to Coca-Cola. In the French region of Brittany, Breizh Cola is available. In Peru, Inca Kola outsells Coca-Cola, which led the Coca-Cola Company to purchase the brand in 1999. In Sweden, Julmust outsells Coca-Cola during the Christmas season. In Scotland, the locally produced Irn-Bru was more popular than Coca-Cola until 2005, when Coca-Cola and Diet Coke began to outpace its sales. In the former East Germany, Vita Cola, invented during communist rule, is gaining popularity. While Coca-Cola does not have the majority of the market share in India, The Coca-Cola Company's other brands like Thums Up and Sprite perform well. The Coca-Cola Company purchased Thums Up in 1993 when they re-entered the Indian market. In 2021, Coca-Cola petitioned to cancel registrations for the marks Thums Up and Limca issued to Meenaxi Enterprise, Inc. based on misrepresentation of source. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board concluded that Meenaxi engaged in blatant misuse in a manner calculated to trade on the goodwill and reputation of Coca-Cola in an attempt to confuse consumers in the United States that its Thums Up and Limca marks were licensed or produced by the source of the same types of cola and lemon-lime soda sold under these marks for decades in India.
The Red Suit And The Plastic Problem
Coca-Cola's advertising has significantly affected American culture, and it is frequently credited with inventing the modern image of Santa Claus as an old man in a red-and-white suit. Although the company did start using the red-and-white Santa image in the 1930s, with its winter advertising campaigns illustrated by Haddon Sundblom, the motif was already common. Coca-Cola was not even the first soft drink company to use the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising: White Rock Beverages used Santa in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923, after first using him to sell mineral water in 1915. The White Rock Collectors Association, Did White Rock or The Coca-Cola Company create the modern Santa Claus Advertisement? , whiterocking.org, 2001. Retrieved the 19th of January 2007. White Rock Beverages, Coca-Cola's Santa Claus: Not The Real Thing! , BevNET.com, the 18th of December 2006. Retrieved the 19th of January 2007. Before Santa Claus, Coca-Cola relied on images of smartly dressed young women to sell its beverages. Coca-Cola's first such advertisement appeared in 1895, featuring the young Bostonian actress Hilda Clark as its spokeswoman. 1941 saw the first use of the nickname Coke as an official trademark for the product, with a series of advertisements informing consumers that Coke means Coca-Cola. In 1971, a song from a Coca-Cola commercial called I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, produced by Billy Davis, became a hit single. In 1995, the Holidays are coming! advertisement featured a train of red delivery trucks, emblazoned with the Coca-Cola name and decorated with Christmas lights, driving through a snowy landscape and causing everything that they pass to light up and people to watch as they pass through. The advertisement fell into disuse in 2001, as the Coca-Cola Company restructured its advertising campaigns so that advertising around the world was produced locally in each country, rather than centrally in the company's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2007, the company brought back the campaign after, according to the company, many consumers telephoned its information center saying that they considered it to mark the beginning of Christmas. The advertisement was created by US advertising agency Doner, and has been part of the company's global advertising campaign for many years. In 2011, Coca-Cola launched a campaign for the Indian holiday Diwali. The campaign included commercials, a song, and an integration with Shah Rukh Khan's film Ra.One. In November 2024, Coca-Cola released three short AI-generated videos as its Christmas ads, reviving the original 1995 Holidays are Coming commercials. The ads were created by three AI studios: Secret Level, Silverside AI, and the Wild Card. Upon its release, the commercials drew backlash on social media, including criticism from Alex Hirsch, the creator of Gravity Falls. The company defended the ads, writing to The New York Times Coca-Cola will always remain dedicated to creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology. The next year, in November 2025, Coca-Cola released another artificial intelligence commercial, executives claiming that this time it is more different from last year's. In 2019, BreakFreeFromPlastic named Coca-Cola the single biggest plastic polluter in the world. After 72,541 volunteers collected 476,423 pieces of plastic waste from around where they lived, a total of 11,732 pieces were found to be labeled with a Coca-Cola brand, including the Dasani, Sprite, and Fanta brands, in 37 countries across four continents. At the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Coca-Cola's head of sustainability, Bea Perez, said customers like them because they reseal and are lightweight, and business won't be in business if we don't accommodate consumers. In February 2022, Coca-Cola announced that it will aim to make 25 percent of its packaging reusable by 2030. In February 2021, Coca-Cola received criticism after a video of a training session, which told employees to try to be less white, was leaked by an employee. The session also said in order to be