Coca-Cola

• 1. Introduction

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  Coca-Cola first sold for five cents a glass at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on the 8th of May 1886. The man behind it was a Confederate colonel named John Stith Pemberton, a wounded Civil War veteran addicted to morphine, who set out to invent something that could replace the drug that had come to control him. What he brewed instead became one of the most recognized beverages on the planet, a drink that would outlast its inventor by more than a century and spread to over 200 countries. But the road from that Atlanta pharmacy counter to global ubiquity runs through forgery, death, a botched formula change that ignited a national uproar, and a spy ring that tried to sell the world's most guarded secret to a rival. How did a patent medicine dreamed up by a morphine-addicted pharmacist become the sixth most valuable brand on earth? And who actually built what Pemberton invented?

• 2. The Colonel's Formula

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  In 1885, at Pemberton's Eagle Drug and Chemical House in Columbus, Georgia, Pemberton registered a preparation called Pemberton's French Wine Coca nerve tonic. The drink drew inspiration from Vin Mariani, a French-Corsican coca wine that had achieved considerable success, but Pemberton added something his European model lacked: the African kola nut, which brought caffeine into the mix. When Atlanta and Fulton County passed prohibition legislation in 1886, Pemberton adapted his alcoholic tonic into a non-alcoholic version and marketed it as "Coca-Cola: The temperance drink," a pitch well-timed to the wide support the temperance movement enjoyed at that moment.

  The name itself was a map of the recipe. The coca leaf and the kola nut were the two original key ingredients, and the drink initially contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. By comparison, a typical dose of cocaine is somewhere in the range of 50-75 mg, so the amount was modest, but it was real. Pemberton claimed the drink cured morphine addiction, indigestion, nerve disorders, headaches, and impotence. He ran the first advertisement for it on the 29th of May 1886 in the Atlanta Journal, describing it as "Delicious! Refreshing! Exhilarating! Invigorating!"

  Frank Mason Robinson, Pemberton's bookkeeper, gave Coca-Cola the logo it still carries. Robinson chose the name and selected the distinctive cursive lettering in a style called Spencerian script, the dominant form of formal handwriting in the United States at the time. Robinson also pushed Pemberton to hand out thousands of free drink coupons and paper the city of Atlanta with publicity banners and streetcar signs, laying down advertising habits the company would never entirely abandon.

• 3. The Transfer of Power

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  By 1888, three separate businesses were selling three versions of Coca-Cola simultaneously. A co-partnership had 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. Into that tangle stepped Asa Griggs Candler, a businessman who would eventually wrest full control, though the path to ownership was neither clean nor simple.

  According to a book his son Charles Howard Candler wrote in 1950 and published through Emory University, on the 14th of April 1888, Candler purchased a one-third interest in the Coca-Cola formula from Pemberton's son Charley for $50 down and $500 payable within 30 days. Three days later, on the 17th of April 1888, he acquired half of the Walker/Dozier interest shares for an additional $750. But Charley Pemberton retained the right to the name "Coca-Cola," and while Candler held the recipe, he was forced to sell his version under the names "Yum Yum" and "Koke." Neither caught on.

  John Pemberton died of stomach cancer on the 16th of August 1888. One account holds that Candler approached Charley's mother at the funeral and offered her $300 in cash for the rights to the name. By the 30th of August 1888, Candler had declared himself sole proprietor, a fact he had printed on his letterheads and invoices that same day. By the 1st of May 1889, his total investment in the enterprise had reached $2,300.

  The ownership story grew darker over time. In 1914, Margaret Dozier, who had been listed as a co-owner in the original 1888 bill of sale, came forward to claim that her signature on that document had been forged. Subsequent analysis suggested John Pemberton's signature had likely been forged as well, with suspicion falling on his son Charley. Charley Pemberton himself did not live to see any of this resolved: on the 23rd of June 1894, he was found unconscious with a stick of opium by his side. Ten days later he died at Atlanta's Grady Hospital at the age of 40.

• 4. Building the System

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  In 1892, Candler incorporated a second company, the modern Coca-Cola Company, and set about building it into something that would outlast him. Robert W. Woodruff, whose father Ernest had led the group that purchased Coca-Cola for $25 million in September 1919, was elected President of the company in 1923. Woodruff's stated goal was to ensure that everyone on earth drank Coca-Cola as their preferred beverage, and the expansion he drove took the brand far beyond its Atlanta origins.

  The production model Candler built and Woodruff expanded runs on franchising. The company produces only a syrup concentrate, which it sells to licensed bottlers around the world. Those bottlers hold exclusive territory contracts and add filtered water and sweeteners to create the finished product. A typical 12-ounce can contains 39 grams of sugar, 34 mg of caffeine, and 140 calories. The bottlers then sell to retail stores, restaurants, and vending machines.

  The first bottling of Coca-Cola had occurred on the 12th of March 1894 at the Biedenharn Candy Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where Joseph A. Biedenharn used the original Hutchinson bottle design. A few years later, two entrepreneurs from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Benjamin F. Thomas and Joseph B. Whitehead, convinced Candler to hand over nationwide bottling rights for a single dollar, a deal Candler later described as a grave mistake. He never collected that dollar. The contract specified bottles would sell at five cents each and had no fixed duration, locking in the price of Coca-Cola from 1886 all the way through to 1959.

• 5. The Secret and Its Keepers

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  The original copy of Coca-Cola's formula sat in Truist Financial's main vault in Atlanta for 86 years before being moved on the 8th of December 2011 to a custom vault at the World of Coca-Cola museum in downtown Atlanta, where visitors can now see it on display. The formula covers only the natural flavorings; all other ingredients appear on the label.

  A popular myth holds that only two executives know the formula and that each knows only half of it. Several sources indicate the actual arrangement is slightly different: two executives do have access, but each knows the complete formula. The company has treated the secrecy itself as a marketing instrument, since only a handful of anonymous employees are said to know the full recipe, and the uncertainty has generated decades of public fascination and competitor speculation.

  The most dramatic breach attempt came from inside the company. Joya Williams, a secretary to the global brand director at Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters, stole formula materials and worked with two accomplices, Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney, to sell the trade secret to Pepsi for $1.5 million. Pepsi did not accept the offer. Instead, Pepsi reported the illegal approach to Coca-Cola and the FBI. The FBI set up a sting operation posing as Pepsi representatives, leading to the arrests. Public prosecutor David Nahmias praised Pepsi's decision publicly, saying trade secrets matter to everyone in the business community.

  On the 11th of February 2011, radio host Ira Glass announced on his PRI program This American Life that his staff had found what appeared to be Pemberton's original recipe in a document called Everett Beal's Recipe Book, reproduced in the 28th of February 1979 issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Coca-Cola archivist Phil Mooney acknowledged the recipe could be a precursor to the 1886 product but stressed that Pemberton's original formula is not the same as the one used today.

• 6. Formula Under Pressure

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  From the beginning, the ingredients in Coca-Cola drew legal and political attention. In 1911, the US government seized 40 barrels and 20 kegs of Coca-Cola syrup in Chattanooga, Tennessee, arguing that caffeine was injurious to health. The court found that a diluted serving contained 78.4 mg of caffeine per 8-ounce serving. Coca-Cola won at the district court level, but the US Pure Food and Drug Act was amended in 1912 to require caffeine be listed as a habit-forming substance on product labels. The case traveled to the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati in 1913, then to the Supreme Court in 1916, where the government effectively prevailed when a new trial was ordered. Rather than continue the litigation, the company voluntarily reduced its caffeine content and paid the government's legal costs.

  The cocaine story had already been settled more quietly. Pemberton had originally called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup. By 1891, Candler claimed his revised formula used only a tenth of that amount. In 1903, fresh coca leaves were removed from the formula entirely. After 1904 the company used spent leaves, the residue left after cocaine extraction, which contained only trace amounts of the drug. By 1929 it had switched to a fully cocaine-free coca leaf extract. That extract is prepared today at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey, the only facility authorized by the federal government to import and process coca leaves from Peru and Bolivia.

  Sugar prices spiked in the 1970s, driven by Soviet demand and possible futures-market manipulation. The Soviet Union was the largest sugar producer at the time. In 1974, Coca-Cola switched from cane sugar to high-fructose corn syrup in response to the elevated prices, a change that would shape the product in North America for decades.

• 7. New Coke and the Public

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  On the 23rd of April 1985, Coca-Cola announced a new formula publicly and with considerable fanfare. Follow-up taste tests showed that most consumers preferred New Coke to both the original and to Pepsi. Management had not anticipated what came next: a fierce, public backlash driven by nostalgia for the original drink. On the 10th of July 1985, less than three months after the launch, the company returned to the old formula under the name Coca-Cola Classic. The original drink had been on the market since 1886; it would carry the word "Classic" on its label until 2011.

  New Coke itself stayed on sale and was renamed Coke II in 1992. It was discontinued in 2002. The name briefly returned in 2019 to promote the third season of a Netflix series, Stranger Things, before disappearing again.

  The episode illustrated something the company had underestimated: by 1985 Coca-Cola had become an American cultural symbol, not just a beverage. The drink had been certified kosher by Atlanta rabbi Tobias Geffen in 1935, a process that required Geffen, with the help of Harold Hirsch, to become the first person outside the company to see the ingredients list. During the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the company sponsored the games in its own hometown, continuing a relationship with the Olympics that dates to Amsterdam in 1928. The drink had been featured in films, referenced in Beatles lyrics, and was what Elvis Presley promoted during his last tour in 1977.

• 8. A Drink and the World

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  Coca-Cola reached Britain on the 31st of August 1900 and traveled to Cuba shortly after the Spanish-American War of 1898, where it gave rise to the Cuba Libre cocktail. The company's first bottling plant outside the United States was established in Cuba in 1906. Fanta was first developed by the German Coca-Cola subsidiary as a wartime substitute when the trade embargo cut off syrup imports during World War II. After the war, the brand spread across South America and then Europe.

  In China, the company entered the market in the 1920s without a localized name. Local shopkeepers created their own phonetic translations, producing the sound "ko-ka ko-la" but with meanings such as "female horse fastened with wax" or "bite the wax tadpole." By the 1930s the company settled on the characters meaning roughly "to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice." Sales halted after the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, when the beverage was treated as a symbol of Western capitalist culture. Distribution resumed in 1979 following Deng Xiaoping's visit to the United States and the restoration of diplomatic relations.

  The drink also became entangled in Cold War politics. Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, a guest of President Eisenhower, reportedly enjoyed Coca-Cola but could not be seen drinking what was considered a symbol of American power. The solution was to deliver the drink in bottles disguised as vodka, with a red-star cap design. As of the company's announcement in June 2012 about resuming operations in Myanmar, Coca-Cola became officially available in every country in the world except Cuba and North Korea, though it reportedly circulates in both as a gray import. The company suspended operations in Russia following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.