Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is a carbonated cola soft drink, produced by the The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) of Atlanta, Georgia. The beverage is widely referred to as Coke, a nickname eventually trademarked by the company. more...

Coke is one of the world's most recognizable and widely sold commercial brands.

Originally intended as a patent medicine when it was invented in the late-19th century, Coca-Cola was acquired by the businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose shrewd marketing tactics led Coke to its world-wide soft drink market dominance during the twentieth century. Though beset periodically by critiques of its health effects and by allegations of wrongdoing by the company, Coca-Cola has remained an internationally popular soft drink.

History

Early years

Columbus, Georgia druggist John Stith Pemberton invented a cocawine called Pemberton's French Wine Coca in 1884. He was inspired by the formidable success of French Angelo Mariani's cocawine, Vin Mariani.

The following year, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed Prohibition legislation, Pemberton began to develop a non-alchoholic version of the French Wine Cola. He named it Coca-Cola, because it included the stimulant coca leaves from South America and was flavored using kola nuts, a source of caffeine. Pemberton called for 5 ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup. The first sales were made at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886, and for the first eight months only an average of nine drinks were sold each day. Pemberton ran the first advertisement for the beverage on May 29 that year in the Atlanta Journal.

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