The "You Invented What?" Story

John Stith Pemberton, Coca-Cola inventor.

It was an ordinary day.  Opened an email sent from a local restaurant telling of one of the biggest inventions in the history of the food and drink industry.  Guy by the name of John Stith Pemberton supposedly invented a patented medicine.  Instead it was introduced as a soda known as Coca-Cola.  John shared his original formula with at least four people before he died in 1888.   Three years later Asa Griggs Candler purchased the rights to the formula from Pemberton's estate and founded the Coca-Cola Company.  He made a few changes to the ingredients which allegedly improved the flavor and entitled him to claim that anyone in possession of Pemberton's original formula no longer knew the "real" formula.  

It became one of the world's best known and best loved soft-drinks throughout the 20th century.  Today the Coca-Cola Company produces concentrate which in turn is sold to licensed Coca-Cola bottlers throughout the world.  The bottlers produce the final product in cans and bottles from the concentrate, filtered water and sweeteners.  One hundred years ago Ernest Woodruff led a group of investors who purchased the company from Candler.  Woodruff placed the only written copy of the formula in the Trust Company Bank in Atlanta as collateral for the acquisition.  In 2011 the copy was taken from the bank and placed in the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta where it remains on public display.  

An old Coca-Cola vending machine.  It
was similar to the one in Lancaster, PA
that was located at the Railway Express
terminal.  My friend Jere's father worked
at the terminal and we made many visits
to get sodas from the machine.  Open the unit,
pry the lid off the glass bottle, empty
the bottle with a straw and close the top.

Coca-Cola became known as one of the most popular coca-based drinks with alleged medicinal properties and benefits.  It was said to alleviate headaches and acted as a "brain and nerve tonic."  The coca leaves that were used in Coca-Cola's preparation were said to contain a very small amount of cocaine along with caffeine from kola nuts that provided Coca-Cola's tonic quality.  Then in 1903 the cocaine was removed, leaving caffeine as the sole stimulant ingredient which caused the company to remove all medicinal claims.  Today the FDA still screens random samples of Coca-Cola syrup for the presence of cocaine.   The company still strives to protect its secret formula by shipping ingredients to its syrup factories in the form of anonymous "merchandises" that are numbered.  The managers of the individual factories are told the mixing procedures using the numbered materials.  

Today's Coca-Cola. Still the best!

Today's taste of Coca-Cola is said to come from vanilla and cinnamon, with trace amounts of essential oils and spices such as nutmeg.  It really doesn't matter to me what they put in the bottle.  Coca-Cola is my favorite soda.  I must say that a bit of Ma DouDou rum, from the island of St. Martin, in it may increase the flavor somewhat as well as adjust your attitude toward life.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Bottles of Ma Doudou rum line the shelf in this St. Martin store.