Coca-Cola

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COCA-COLA

COCA-COLA. The soft drink Coca-Cola was invented by the Atlanta pharmacist and patent medicine maker John S. Pemberton in 1886. Its name, suggested by an employee, Frank Robinson, derived from its two principal drug ingredients, the Peruvian coca leaf (cocaine) and the West African kola nut (caffeine). Coca-Cola was originally sold as a "nerve tonic" to cure the then-popular supposed disease of neurasthenia, and its promoters claimed it treated headaches and hangovers as well. The sugary syrup, mixed with carbonated water, was also sold as a "delicious and refreshing" soda fountain drink.

Pemberton died penniless in 1888, but a fellow Atlanta pharmacist, As a G. Candler, with the assistance of Frank Robinson, made Coca-Cola a national soda fountain success by the end of the century, gradually abandoning patent medicine claims. The current Coca-Cola

Company was incorporated in 1892. Candler saw no future in bottling the drink and gave the bottling rights to Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead, two Chattanooga lawyers, in 1899. Thomas and Whitehead parlayed the contract into a successful bottling franchise system that truly democratized the drink. In 1903, under considerable social pressure, Candler removed the cocaine from Coca-Cola. In 1919 his children sold the business for $25 million to a syndicate of bankers headed by the Atlanta businessman Ernest Woodruff. Plagued by high sugar prices, Woodruff unsuccessfully attempted to abrogate the perpetual bottling contract. In 1923, his son Robert W. Woodruff took over the presidency of the troubled company and made Coca-Cola, popularly called "Coke," a symbol of the American way of life through ubiquitous, effective advertising. The patriarchal Woodruff passed on every major company decision until his death in 1985 at the age of ninety-five.

During World War II, Coca-Cola was deemed an essential morale booster for American troops overseas, and Coke employees established bottling plants behind the lines, thus positioning the company for swift global expansion in the postwar world. In France and elsewhere during the early 1950s, communists spread rumors that Coke destroyed health and virility, but efforts to halt the soft drink's international expansion failed.

Beginning in the depression era, Pepsi-Cola arose as a fierce competitor, offering more drink for a nickel. Coke finally matched Pepsi ounce for ounce and offered Sprite, Fanta, and other drinks from the 1960s on ward. In the 1980s and 1990s, the aggressive chief executive officer Rober to Goizueta revolutionized the company, giving the revered Coke name to Diet Coke and in 1985 changing the flavor of Coca-Cola in the New Coke disaster. Ironically, this marketing blunder reinvigorated sales of Classic Coca-Cola when the company brought it back after a three-month hiatus. Following brief forays into diversification, notably in Columbia Pictures, Goizueta refocused the company solely on soft drinks. Under his leadership the share price shot up. Following Goizueta's death in 1997, the company entered a difficult period during which its stock declined.

Although the "cola wars" continued into the twenty-first century, Coca-Cola remained the world's preeminent soft drink. The world's most widely distributed product at that time, "Coca-Cola" was reputedly the second best-known word on Earth after "okay." The history of Coca-Cola provides a case study in modern image marketing, in which a fizzy soft drink, mostly sugar water, assumed massive symbolic weight for both critics and advocates.