Dr John Stith Pemberton, a local pharmacist, stirred up a fragrant, caramel-coloured liquid and carried a jug of the new product down the street to Jacobs’ Pharmacy, where it was sampled, pronounced ‘excellent’ and placed on sale for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink.
Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, named the mixture Coca-Cola, and wrote it out in the distinctive ‘Spencerian’ script which is still used today.
In the first year, Pemberton sold just nine glasses of Coca-Cola a day. A century and a quarter later, The Coca-Cola Company has produced more than 10bn gallons of syrup. Unfortunately for Pemberton, he was an inventor rather than an entrepreneur and he sold the business to Atlanta businessman Asa Griggs Candler for around $2,300.
Candler turned a quaint little business into something serious. Still selling syrup for soda fountains, Candler was unimpressed when Mississippi businessman Joseph Biedenharn sent him a bottled version of the drink, giving away the exclusive rights to bottle it in 1899 for just $1 to two Chattanooga lawyers, Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead.
The rest, as they say, is history …
Bill Bruce is group editorial director of FoodBev Media. You can contact him here
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