Story Of Coca Cola!

American pharmacist, Dr. John Styth Pemberton, a resident of Atlanta in Georgia, USA was the inventor of coca cola, the world's largest selling soft drink. It was made and consumed by him for the first time on 8 may 1886.

Dr. Pemberton stirred a mixture of caramel, african kola nuts, leaves of coca shrub, melted sugar, eleven other ingredients and water in a kettle over an open fire in his backyard. He thus created a mixture which he sold as a brain and nerve tonic in the local drugstores.

It was Pemberton's partner, Frank M Robinson, who suggested the mixture be named 'coca cola' after two main ingredients- coca and kola. Sales were poor in the first year and the advertising costs of the product were much higher than its sales revenue. After an incident that took place in a drugstore, coca cola was put on the market as a fizzy drink.It was first sold at 5 cents a glass at Jacob's pharmacy at Atlanta in Georgia state.That year Dr. Pemberton sold 25 gallons of the drink in red wooden casks and from then on red color has always been associated with the Coca cola drink.

Dr. Pemberton sold the company to Asa Griggs Candler in 1888 and soon died without seeing the success of his invention. Coca Cola became a huge success and by 1914, Candler had made a profit of more than 50 million dollars. Another man who made early investment in the company was Ty Cobb, a well-known baseball player.Candler obtained a patent for the drink in 1893 and it began to be sold in bottles in 1894.

In 1903, the company was criticised forusing cocaine as a stimulant in its drink. Immediately the company made Coca Cola with coca leaves instead of cocaine. It stopped advertising the drink as a cure for headaches and instead started selling it as a refreshing drink.By 1917, three million cokes were being sold everyday. Asa Griggs Candler continued to market coca cola with success until his death in 1919.His family then sold their shares to a group of businessmen led by Ernest Woodruff for 25 million dollars.He served as the president of coca cola from 1923 to 1981. Coke became the first consumer product to be featured on the cover of 'Time' magazine published in the USA.

Now, more than 1.9 billion servings of coca cola drinks are enjoyed in more than 200 countries each day.
More than 10,000 soft drinks are being consumed per second . Cuba and North Korea are the only two countries in the world where coca cola is not sold!