History of Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola was born on may 8th, 1886 at the hands of Dr.
John Smith Pemberton. In the laboratory of his house at 107
Marietta Street, Atlanta, Georgia he finally settled
on the syrup later to be known as Coca-Cola.1.
John Pemberton was born in Knoxville, Georgia in 1831.
At the age of 17, he
attended the Botanical Medicine School of the State of
Georgia.2. After school he owned a drug store in Columbus,
Georgia and fought for the confederacy in the Civil War.
During the war he became addicted to morphine from an
injury.3. After the war ended, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia
and kept up his pharmacy business at home. He created such
patent medicines as Globe flower Cough Syrup, Extract of
Stillingia, Triple Liver Pills, Lemon & Orange Elixer, and
French wine of Coca. The latter, being very similar to the
"Vin Mariani" created by a private industrialist, Angelo
Mariani, was inevitably the biggest seller. The "Vin
Mariani" was a cocaine laced Bordeaux wine, popular
throughout the world.4. French Wine of coca included
cocaine as well as caffeine from the kola nut found in a
tree from Africa. It was sold as a cure for nervous
disorders, disturbances of internal plumbing and
impotency.5.
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In November 1885, Pemberton decided to remove the wine
and offer it as a syrup based medicine or a fountain drink,
after Atlanta voted to become a dry city effective
July 1886.6. He began experimenting. When he started out the
overall taste was very bitter due to the caffeine and
cocaine. He added a lot of sugar to cover these flavors, but
that proved to make it a very sickening kind of sweet. TO
counter-balance that he added various fruit flavors and
citric acids. The final products ingredients included: 1 oz.
Citric Caffeine, 1oz. Ext. Vanilla, 2 ½ oz. Flavoring, 4 oz.
F.E. Coco, Caramel Sufficient, 3 oz. Citric Acid, 1 Qt. Lime
Juice, 30 lbs. Sugar, & 2 ½ gal. Water. The flavoring was
made of 80 Oil Orange, 120 Oil Lemon, 40 Oil Nutmeg, 1 Qt.
Alcohol, 40 Oil Cinnamon, 20 Oil Coriander, & 40 Oil
Neroli. The original directions were quite short and simple.
They read as follows: Mix Caffeine Acid and Lime Juice 1 Qt.
Boiling water add vanilla and flavoring when cool. Let stand
for 24 hours.7
A few months later he finally settled on the final
recipe of what would later be known as Coca-Cola.
Frank Robinson and David Roe were introduced into a
partnership with Pemberton a few months before he created
the final product.
Instead of Robinson and Roe selling him a device that was
able to print two colors with the same pressing, he sold
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them on his product. The three of them along with an old
partner of Pemberton's, Ed Holland, created the original
Coca-Cola corporation.8. Robinson immediately took over
advertising, manufacture, and promotion of the product. He
is the one who created the white spencarian handwriting on
red background. Today it is the most widely recognized
trademark in the world. The first ad for the new product was
placed by Robison in the Atlanta daily Journal on May 29th,
1886. It read
"Coca-Cola, delicious! Refreshing Invigorating! The new and Popular Soda Fountain Drink,
containing properties of the wonderful coca plant and
the famous cola nuts.
For sale by Willis Venable and Nunnally & Rawson."
Official Coca-Cola folklore states that it was merely a
medicine mixed with plain water.9. Not only does this...
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