John Pemberton

 

John Pemberton

The story of the man who invented Coca-Cola

 

1886 - In Atlanta (USA), John Pemberton patented Coca-Cola, a green-colored beverage made from extracts of coca leaves, cola nuts, sugar, caramel, purified water, and carbon dioxide. Beginning in 1919, it spread abroad, achieving great popularity.

 

To understand the birth of the world's most famous beverage, we must go back to the late 19th century. In Georgia (Atlanta, United States), lived Dr. John Stith Pemberton, a chemist and pharmacist from the city whose curiosity and desire for innovation led him to create the best-selling soft drink of today.

 

Georgia was the pioneer state in the United States to adopt Prohibition, renouncing the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages during a preliminary experimental period in 1886 and 1887.

 

At that time, the industrial sector was growing at a considerable pace, and with it the long hours of workers, who demanded stimulants to help them cope with the daily grind.

 

Pemberton spent many hours mixing ingredients to create a syrup for digestive problems that would also provide sufficient energy (a new "stimulating and invigorating" drink was the claim of Coca-Cola's early advertising). Among many other remedies and elixirs of the time, there was something different about Pemberton's concoction: the unique flavor that characterizes Coca-Cola, which the Atlanta pharmacist achieved by mixing natural ingredients such as coca leaf, cola nut, and soda water in his laboratory. It was May 8, 1886.

 

With the syrup in a pitcher, Pemberton headed to the now-famous Jacob's Pharmacy, where each glass of syrup, with ice and mixed with carbonated water, began selling for 5 cents. Little by little, this new drink gained a foothold in local society and infiltrated the daily lives of Americans.

 

From a medicinal preparation to a world-renowned brand

 

Frank M. Robinson, Pemberton's bookkeeper, was the one who suggested the name by which the drink became known and even designed the logo, believing that the two capital Cs would create a striking design that everyone would remember.

 

Throughout 1888, Dr. Pemberton sold small portions of his business and, shortly before his death, sold what remained to Asa G. Candler, whose business acumen led him to purchase additional rights and take control. Pemberton died unaware of the worldwide success of the drink he had created.

 

The myth of the Coca-Cola recipe was born in 1892, when Asa G. Candler made some changes to the original recipe and secretly passed them on to his children and heirs: this way, only they could make the successful drink.

 

Pemberton died unaware of the worldwide success of the drink he had created.

 

During 1895, Coca-Cola ceased to be a medicinal preparation and became one of the most popular beverages in North America: its slogan became "delicious and refreshing," and factories began to expand beyond Atlanta, expanding into the United States and neighboring Mexico and Canada. At that time, the first two official bottlers appeared: Benjamin Franklin Thomas and Joseph Brown Whitehead.

 

An unmistakable bottle for a unique flavor

Even at the beginning of the 20th century, Coca-Cola wanted not only the flavor of the beverage to be clearly identifiable and unique, but also its bottle: it had to be curved, highly recognizable (even in the dark or broken), and free of paper labels. So the company contacted 10 glass companies and challenged them.

 

The design of the iconic Contour bottle is inspired by the shapes of a cocoa pod. Left, prototype; right, final design.

 

On November 16, 1915, the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, registered the patent for the new bottle. Its design, created by a team that included C.J. and William Root (the owners), Swedish architect Alexander Samuelson (the foreman), and employees Earl Dean and Clyde Edwards, was inspired by the oval shape of a cocoa pod with distinctive grooves.

 

This design was the clear winner when Coca-Cola executives and their bottling partners met in early 1916 to choose the bottle they would use from then on, although it was agreed that the shapes would be softened slightly to facilitate production, giving rise to the design we all know and recognize today.

 

In the 1920s, the company began bottling in Europe, also arriving in Spain in 1953.

 

Today, more than 130 years after Pemberton's genius, we can still breathe that entrepreneurial spirit capable of inspiring moments of optimism and happiness and, of course, refreshing the world. And in all this time, Coca-Cola has not stopped evolving.

With affection,

Ruben