23. The Man Who Made Coca-Cola, and the Man Who Made Coca-Cola a Giant
Coca-Cola was invented in the late nineteenth century by John Stith Pemberton, a Civil War Confederate colonel and morphine addict with a medical degree. He sought to develop a non-addictive drink, and eventually came up with and registered Pemberton’s French Wine coca nerve tonic. Inspired by Vin Mariani, a nineteenth-century coca wine medicine, it was basically Coca-Cola with alcohol. When Atlanta prohibited the sale of booze, he marketed a nonalcoholic version, “Coca-Cola: The temperance drink“. It appealed widely to opponents of alcohol.
In 1888, a young druggist named Asa Candler bought a one-third interest in the formula for $50 down and $500 in thirty days. When Pemberton died a few months later, Candler swiftly secured the exclusive right to the Coca-Cola name. He was better at business than Pemberton and saw the concoction’s potential. So he set up a corporation and began to widely market the drink. By the early twentieth century, The Coca-Cola Company was America’s – and the world’s – biggest soft drink manufacturer and seller.
