History of Coca Cola
History of Coca-ColaHistory 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 � oz. Flavoring, 4 oz.
F.E. Coco, Caramel Sufficient, 3 oz. Citric Acid, 1 Qt. Lime
Juice, 30 lbs. Sugar, & 2 � 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
advertisement state otherwise but it also gives the reason
for the name.
Coca-Cola started off well but, Pemberton had serious
problems involving health. He was severely addicted to
morphine and cocaine and it wasn�t long before this started
to interfere with his business.10. Pemberton cheated
Robinson out of his interests in Coca-Cola and sold them to
other individuals, which when added together totaled over
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100%. Robison consulted a lawyer but wasn�t able to win a
case. He
did, however, convince his lawyer�s brother, Asa Candler, to
buy the business. He then went to work for Candler in
1888.11.
Asa Candler was born on December 10th, 1851. Growing up
Asa decided that he didn�t want to attend school, so instead
he became a apprentice to Dr. Best & Dr. Kirkpatrick in
Carterville, to become a pharmacist. Three years later, he
left the doctors and went to Atlanta with $1.75 to his name,
in hopes of finding some opportunities. Although he applied
for many jobs, ironically one of which was Mr. Pemberton�s
drugstore, he was unable to find work at first. Eventually
he did find work in a position with a George Jefferson
Howard and found himself as the stores chief clerk. Although
he had such a great position he quit shortly after promoted.
Apparently he had fallen in love with his boss�s 15 year old
daughter, Lizzie. This had caused a falling out with his boss
so he went in search for new work. Asa partnered up with
Marcellus B. Hall and together they founded their own
wholesale druggist shop. A year later he went back and
married Lizzie and bought out his partner three more later.
He tried to smooth things out with his father in law by
selling him � of the business. The attempt was successful and
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the business had become one of the largest drug businesses
in Atlanta by 1888.12.
Asa made a few changes to the original recipe to
improve it. Around 1903 he removed the cocaine from the
beverage, after it was proven to be addictive.13. Robison
continued his part in advertising for the company. He is
greatly responsible for the success in the product. By 1890,
advertising and sales were equal.
Asa employed many family members, one such was, his
nephew, Sam Dobbs. Dobbs was working in advertising until
his views began to conflict with that of Robinson.
Asa, forced to chose between the two, went to his family.
Robinson dealt with it maturely and continued working until
his retirement in. Candler later found out that he
had made a mistake, when Dobbs stabbed him the back.14.
Candler was not knowledgeable in bottling and feared he
would give Coca-Cola a bad name by creating a product not
worthy of the name. Therefore he gave the bottling
rights to two lawyers whom had gained his trust, Benjamin
Franklin Thomas and Joseph Brown Whitehead.15. They were
allowed a gallon of syrup for only one dollar a gallon and
any it was arranged to be kept at that price for any
bottling company for forever. The lawyers sold franchises to
other bottlers and by 1919 every major city in the U.S. had
a bottling plant.16.
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The Coca-Cola comp any had been going on with
comparatively little legal problems. Unfortunately, their
luck changed and by 1917 they were being attacked in
many places. The contract with the bottling companies was
hurting them because the cost to make one gallon of the
syrup had increased significantly. They were fighting their
former nickname of "dope". They were constantly fighting to
keep their product from being banned because the cocaine was
a serious health risk. Their biggest problem with the law
came when the Federal Government claimed that they were
breaking the 1906 Pure Food & Drug laws. They said that by
having coca in the name and the beverage not containing
cocaine was false advertisement. Coca-Cola proved that the
flavor was now coming from the decocainized coca leaf and
avoided being banned once again.17.
Asa was faced with many hardships in and outside of the
company. In 1917 he was elected mayor of Atlanta and he
discovered that his wife was dying of breast cancer.
With all that was going on at the time it was remarkable
that he turned down an offer of $25 million for the company
from two New York lawyers. He felt that he needed to
show his wife his compassion for her and his children and
his family views. He decided to give the company to his
children on Christmas Day 1917.18.
The oldest son, Howard took control of the company with
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his rivaling and bickering siblings at the board. This
environment was not healthy for the business. In
1919 Dobbs saw this as an opportunity and met with Earnest
Woodruff. Together they convinced the children that the best
thing to do with the company was to take the previous offer
of 1917. Dobbs then became the president and gained a 1/3
voting block.19.
The children never bothered to tell their father and
therefor he found out about it while reading the newspaper.
Candler was hurt by his children�s dishonesty to him, and
he even broke into tears when discussing it to a one of his
daughter-in-laws. For the last ten years of his life he
would devote his studies to philanthropy.20.
Woodruff had a son named Robert, who was apparently a
disgrace to his name. He flunked out of high school and
found work in the General Pipe and Foundery Company. He
started to work his way up in the business but was fired for
no reason. He then went to work as a salesman and again was
fired for no reason after he started doing well in the
business. His father offered him a job with the Coca-Cola
company, so he took it because of his plans of marriage. It
wasn�t long before he found out that his father
was the reason why his former jobs had fired him and he
quit. He found work in the White Motor Company and within a
few years had worked his way up to vice-president.
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The Coca-Cola board, seeing this, offered him the
presidency. Earnest vetoed the attempt after hearing that he
wanted full reign of the company to do as he felt. Earnest
later rethought his decision and offered the position to his
son.21.
The second Woodruff accomplished many things early on.
He made service stations have the same rights and usage as
retail outlets and invented the usage of the cooler. He
demanded that all bottling companies issue a uniform drink.
Those that did not comply were bought out or simply lost
support from the company and eventually died away.22.
Advertisement was still a very large portion of the
businesses success and extremely influential to society. So
much that the entire persona of Santa Clause was
changed from a tall and gaunt man in blue to the one we know
him as, short and fat dressed in red.23.
When WW II came around most of the popularity of the
company as in Canada, Germany, and Cuba. During the war
Woodruff decreed that every solder wearing a uniform was
entitled to a Coca-Cola. He made this mission possible by
setting up and running 64 new bottling plants throughout the
world to ensure that they would be available to supply the
soldiers. This introduced the company in the world of
marketing considerably and made many satisfied customers
with returning soldiers.24.
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Although Robert Woodruff retired in 1955, he kept
control of the business through
the Finance Committee. He lived to see many challenges such
as Pepsi and many accomplishments such as the introductions
of many new beverages such as Sprite, TaB, Mello Yello, Mr.
Pibb, and Fresca.
On May 30th, 1980 Cuban, Roberto Goizueta, was honored
with the position of president of the Coca-Cola company.
Goizueta was one of the few people to ever know
the secret formula because he was a chemist for the company.
The secret had managed to only come to the knowledge of so
few people because, starting with Asa giving it to his
son, as each chemist died or retired he taught his successor
In 1980 Diet Coke became the first soda produced by the
company to share the namesake . This was not only a big deal
but fortunately it was a big success as well. He presided
over one of the more successful campaigns in the company�s
history, the "Coke it is" campaign of 1982. Also in that
year the Coca-Cola company bought Columbia Pictures for &750
million. At the moment the deal looked bad, but soon showed
itself worthy when such movies as E.T. and Tootsie
were produced. Sales shot up and brought in a great amount
of profit. To end it, he sold it
to Sony for $3.4 billion.25.
As life in our society would have it though, he is not
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mostly remembered for these great achievements but for his
one mistake. Actually the biggest mistake in corporate
history. At the time their biggest rival, Pepsi was
conducting the "Pepsi Challenge". This was a blind taste
test where each person was given a swallow or two and then
were to choose the one they preferred. The way that our
taste buds work made the majority choose the sweeter of the
two. This test was not completely accurate given that over
the course of a bottle or can (especially in a hot summer
day) the bite was preferred, whereas the excess sweetening
can be sickening.
Nevertheless, in response to these tests Coca-Cola
decided that the times were calling for a change and it was
up to them to keep up. After consulting Woodruff, who
was a 95 year old dying man they created a new formula but
kept it under the same name.26. The public was outraged! At
one point it was said that they were getting over 8,000
calls a day with upset consumers expressing their concerns.
The New Coke was such a disaster that at one point Pepsi
even acquired the #1 position of the most popular sugared-
cola in America.27. Coca-Cola eventually woke up and realized
the mistake and threw out he new stuff and reintroduced the
former recipe as Coca-Cola Classic.28. Even though this all
seemed disastrous at first it was proved that the threat of
taking the original recipe away was just what the company
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needed to boost it�s sales, and soon enough they flew past
competition to regain their #1 spot once again. However,
this marketing success can not be attributed to ingenuity,
but to very good luck!
It was not until after the crisis had passed that the
company and the public as a whole realized just how much
Coca-Cola was a part of everyone�s history. Children grew
up with traditions of hot dogs, apple pie, base ball, and
Coca-Cola.
On the 18th of October, 1997 Roberto Goizueta died at
the age of 65 from a long and hard fight with cancer.28.
Currently, an ex-accountant who has been with the company
for years has been appointed the new president. The company
expects him to be another great success in the history of
Coca-Cola.