How Coca-Cola Was Invented in Atlanta in 1886

There's a pharmacist in Atlanta who once owned part of Coca-Cola. Partial rights, right at the start. And he gave them away... for a glass factory.

A glass factory. He swapped Coca-Cola for a BUILDING?

He did. And years later he wrote down exactly what he thought of himself for doing it. We'll get there. But start here. The eighth of May, eighteen eighty-six. A man walks down an Atlanta street carrying a jug of brown syrup he mixed in his own lab.

Carrying it. Like, by hand, down the sidewalk.

By hand. He hands it over at a soda fountain, they taste it, they call it excellent, and they put it on sale. Five cents a glass.

Okay, and how many people actually bought the thing?

First year? An average of nine drinks a day.

Nine? A DAY? That's not a business, that's a hobby.

That's the whole point. The man who made it, Doctor John Stith Pemberton, died about two years later, having already sold off his stake. He never saw a single thing that came next.

So who is he? Chemist in a lab coat, serious science guy?

Patent medicine man. His hit, in eighteen eighty-five, was Pemberton's French Wine Coca. Alcoholic. Sold as a nerve tonic and a headache cure, inspired by a European drink called Vin Mariani.

A headache cure with wine in it. I mean... technically effective.

Technically. Then the county passes a prohibition bill, and overnight his best product is illegal. So he has to build a version with no alcohol in it. That's the pressure that produces Coca-Cola. Not inspiration... regulation.

Wait, hang on. That's the real origin story? Not a flash of genius, just a guy scrambling because the law killed his other drink?

That's what the Library of Congress lays out. And there's a darker thread underneath it. According to Atlanta History Center archives, Pemberton was trying to cure his own addiction. He experimented with other substances, including cocaine, at a time when it wasn't controlled.

So the inventor was, partly, self-medicating.

Partly. That's the nineteenth century patent medicine world. Half pharmacy, half marketing, everything is a tonic for something.

Alright, take me back to the jug. Who turns syrup into an actual drink?

This is the lucky accident. The pharmacy belonged to Doctor Joseph Jacobs, open in Atlanta since eighteen eighty-four. He rented his soda fountain out to a man called Willis Venable. And that day, Jacobs tells Venable to add water to Pemberton's tonic.

Plain water.

Venable reaches for carbonated instead.

The fizz was a MISTAKE?

The fizz was a substitution. And that's the drink. Delicious and refreshing, five cents a glass.

And the name? Some committee, some agency?

The bookkeeper. Frank M. Robinson, Pemberton's partner. He liked the name because he thought the two Cs would look well in advertising. Then he wrote it out himself. His own flowing script.

Hold on. The most recognisable handwriting on Earth is... the bookkeeper's penmanship?

Not a designer. Not a studio. A man who kept the books and had a good eye for letters.

That's the best fact I've heard all week.

Now the near-death moment. Pemberton is ill, he's short of money, so he sells the business off piece by piece. Enter an Atlanta businessman, Asa Candler. Eighteen eighty-seven, he buys into a third of the brand, then persuades Pemberton to sell him the formula... for two thousand three hundred dollars.

Two thousand three hundred dollars. For Coca-Cola.

And Jacobs, the pharmacist whose fountain poured the very first glass, still held partial rights. He said he didn't want to be bothered with it. So he traded them to Candler for a glass factory Candler owned.

There it is. He must have thought about that every day for the rest of his life.

He wrote it down. Nineteen twenty-nine, in print. After disposing of my Coca-Cola stock to Mister Candler, he says, I never owned any more of it... which evidences my poor judgment.

Oof. Putting your worst decision on the record, in your own words.

Meanwhile Candler founds The Coca-Cola Company in eighteen ninety-two, a Georgia corporation, set up to manufacture AND advertise the drink across the country. That second word is the whole story.

So the secret formula was never really the asset.

The formula gets the mystique. But nine drinks a day was the formula's honest verdict. What changed was one man who decided the job was getting it everywhere, and a bookkeeper who knew two Cs would look good on a sign. Candler sold the whole thing on to a group of investors in nineteen nineteen.

So what do I do with that, if I'm sitting on something?

Be careful who you sell to, and be very careful about which part you think is valuable. Jacobs had the world's best-selling drink in his hands and took a building instead, because he judged it on what it was that week.

Nine glasses a day. In a pharmacy. In Atlanta.

Every giant thing looks small on the day it's born. The trick is not trading it for a glass factory.