COCA COLA LEGENDAR DRINK

Coca-Cola
It has been suggested that Passover Coca Cola be merged into this article or section. This article is about the beverage. For its manufacturer, see The Coca-Cola Company.
Coca-Cola
The official Coca-Cola logo
Type
Cola
Manufacturer
The Coca-Cola Company
Country of origin
United States
Introduced
1886
Related products
PepsiRC ColaVirgin Cola
Coca-Cola is a cola (a type of carbonated soft drink) sold in stores, restaurants and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO), which is often referred to as simply Coca-Cola or Coke. Coke is the world's most recognizable brand, according to BusinessWeek
Originally intended as a patent medicine when it was invented in the late 19th century by John Pemberton, Coca-Cola was bought out by businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coke to its dominance of the world soft drink market throughout the 20th century. Although faced with criticisms of its health effects and various allegations of wrongdoing by the company, Coca-Cola has remained a popular soft drink to the present day.
The company actually produces concentrate for Coca-Cola, which is then sold to various Coca-Cola bottlers throughout the world. The bottlers, who hold territorially exclusive contracts with the company, produce finished product in cans and bottles from the concentrate in combination with filtered water and sweeteners. The bottlers then sell, distribute and merchandise Coca-Cola in cans and bottles to retail stores and vending machines. Such bottlers include Coca-Cola Enterprises, which is the single largest Coca-Cola bottler in North America, Australia, Asia and Europe. The Coca-Cola Company also sells concentrate for fountain sales to major restaurants and food service distributors.
The Coca-Cola Company has, on occasion, introduced other cola drinks under the Coke brand name. The most common of these is Diet Coke, which has become a major diet cola but others exist, including Diet Coke Caffeine-Free , Cherry Coke, Coca-Cola Zero, Vanilla Coke and special editions with lemon and with lime, and even with coffee. The Coca-Cola Company owns and markets other soft drinks that do not carry the large Coca-Cola brand marking, such as Sprite, Fanta, Pibb, and others, but the Coca-Cola Company's trademark name can usually be found somewhere on the bottle.

The Las Vegas Strip World of Coca-Cola museum in








5 Advertising History
See also: The Coca-Cola Company, History section

Old German Coca-Cola bottle opener.
The first Coca-Cola recipe was invented in Covington, Georgia, by John Stith Pemberton, originally as a cocawine called Pemberton's French Wine Coca in 1885.[2][3] He may have been inspired by the formidable success of European Angelo Mariani's cocawine, Vin Mariani.
In 1885, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed Prohibition legislation, Pemberton responded by developing Coca-Cola, essentially a carbonated, non-alcoholic version of French Wine Cola.[4] The beverage was named Coca-Cola because, originally, the stimulant mixed in the beverage was coca leaves from South America. In addition, the drink was flavored using kola nuts, also acting as the beverage's source of caffeine.[5] The first serving in 1886 cost US$0.05.[6] Pemberton called for five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup, a significant dose, whereas, in 1891, Candler claimed his formula (altered extensively from Pemberton's original) contained only a tenth of this amount. Coca-Cola did once contain an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass, but in 1903 it was removed.[7] After 1904, Coca-Cola started using, instead of fresh leaves, "spent" leaves - the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with cocaine trace levels left over at a molecular level.[8][9] To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a non-narcotic coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.[10] In the United States, Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant.[11]
Coca-Cola was initially sold as a patent medicine for five cents a glass at soda fountains, which were popular in the United States at the time thanks to a belief that carbonated water was good for the health.[12] Pemberton claimed Coca-Cola cured many diseases, including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence. The first sales were made at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886, and for the first eight months only nine drinks were sold each day. Pemberton ran the first advertisement for the beverage on May 29 of the same year in the Atlanta Journal.[13] However, the earliest advertisement image still available appears to be an April 26, 1887 ad from the Columbus Daily Enquirer in Georgia.[14]

The earliest known ad (with an available image) for Coca Cola, from the April 26, 1887 issue of The Columbus (Ohio) Daily Enquirer.
By 1888, three versions of Coca-Cola — sold by three separate businesses — were on the market. Asa Griggs Candler acquired a stake in Pemberton's company in 1887 and incorporated it as the Coca Cola Company in 1888.[15] The same year, while suffering from an ongoing addiction to morphine, Pemberton sold the rights a second time to four more businessmen: J.C. Mayfield, A.O. Murphey, C.O. Mullahy and E.H. Bloodworth. Meanwhile, Pemberton's alcoholic son Charley Pemberton began selling his own version of the product.[16]
In an attempt to clarify the situation, John Pemberton declared that the name Coca-Cola belonged to Charley, but the other two manufacturers could continue to use the formula. So, in the summer of 1888, Candler sold his beverage under the names Yum Yum and Koke. After both failed to catch on, Candler set out to establish a legal claim to Coca-Cola in late 1888, in order to force his two competitors out of the business. Candler purchased exclusive rights to the formula from John Pemberton, Margaret Dozier and Woolfolk Walker. However, in 1914, Dozier came forward to claim her signature on the bill of sale had been forged, and subsequent analysis has indicated John Pemberton's signature was most likely a forgery as well.[17]
In 1892, Candler incorporated a second company, The Coca-Cola Company (the current corporation), and in 1910, Candler had the earliest records of the company burned, further obscuring its legal origins. Regardless, Candler began marketing the product, although the efficacy of his concerted advertising campaign would not be realized until much later. By the time of its 50th anniversary, the drink had reached the status of a national icon for the USA. In 1935, it was certified kosher by Rabbi Tobias Geffen, after the company made minor changes in the sourcing of some ingredients.[18]
Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time on March 12, 1894. Cans of Coke first appeared in 1955.[19] The first bottling of Coca-Cola occurred in Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the Biedenharn Candy Company in 1891. Its proprietor was Joseph A. Biedenharn. The original bottles were Biedenharn bottles, very different from the much later hobble-skirt design that is now so familiar. Asa Candler was tentative about bottling the drink, but the two entrepreneurs who proposed the idea were so persuasive that Candler signed a contract giving them control of the procedure. However, the loosely termed contract proved to be problematic for the company for decades to come. Legal matters were not helped by the decision of the bottlers to subcontract to other companies — in effect, becoming parent bottlers.[20]

New Coke
Main article: New Coke

New Coke stirred up a controversy when it replaced the original Coca-Cola in 1985. Coca-Cola Classic was reinstated within a few months of New Coke's introduction into the market.
On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola, amid much publicity, attempted to change the formula of the drink. Some authorities believe that New Coke, as the reformulated drink was called, was invented specifically to respond to its commercial competitor, Pepsi[15] (which had more lemon oil and less orange oil, and used vanillin rather than vanilla). Double-blind taste tests indicated that most consumers preferred the taste of Pepsi to Coke. In taste tests, drinkers were more likely to respond positively to sweeter drinks, and Pepsi had the advantage over Coke because it was much sweeter. Coca-Cola tinkered with the formula and created "New Coke". Follow-up taste tests revealed that most consumers preferred the taste of New Coke to both Coke and Pepsi. The reformulation was led by the then-CEO of the company, Roberto Goizueta, and the president Don Keough.
It is unclear what part long-time company president Robert W. Woodruff played in the reformulation. Goizueta claimed that Woodruff endorsed it a few months before his death in 1985; others have pointed out that, as the two men were alone when the matter was discussed, Goizueta might have misinterpreted the wishes of the dying Woodruff, who could speak only in monosyllables. It has also been alleged that Woodruff might not have been able to understand what Goizueta was telling him.[citation needed]
The commercial failure of New Coke therefore came as a grievous blow to the management of the Coca-Cola Company. It is possible that customers would not have noticed the change if it had been made secretly or gradually, and thus brand loyalty could have been maintained. Coca-Cola management was unprepared, however, for the nostalgic sentiments the drink aroused in the American public; some compared changing the Coke formula to rewriting the American Constitution.
The new Coca-Cola formula subsequently caused a public backlash. Gay Mullins, from Seattle, Washington, founded the Old Cola Drinkers of America organization, which attempted to sue the company, and lobbied for the formula of Old Coke to be released into the public domain. This and other protests caused the company to return to the old formula under the name Coca-Cola Classic on July 10, 1985. The company was later accused of performing this volte-face as an elaborate ruse to introduce a new product while reviving interest in the original. Donald Keough, company president at the time, responded to the accusation by declaring: "Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart."
The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest consumer of natural vanilla extract. When New Coke was introduced in 1985, this had a severe impact on the economy of Madagascar, a prime vanilla exporter, since New Coke used vanillin, a less-expensive synthetic substitute. Purchases of vanilla more than halved during this period. But the flop of New Coke brought a recovery.
Meanwhile, the market share for New Coke had dwindled to only 3% by 1986. The company renamed the product "Coke II" in 1992 (not to be confused with "Coke C2", a reduced-sugar cola launched by Coca-Cola in 2004). However, sales falloff caused a severe cutback in distribution. By 1998, it was sold in only a few places in the Midwestern U.S.

21st century
On February 7, 2005, the Coca-Cola Company announced that in the second quarter of 2005 they planned a launch of a Diet Coke product sweetened with the artificial sweetener sucralose ("Splenda"), the same sweetener currently used in Pepsi One.[21][22] On March 21, 2005, it announced another diet product, "Coca-Cola Zero", sweetened partly with a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium. Recently Coca-Cola has begun to sell a new "healthy soda" Diet Coke with Vitamins B6, B12, Magnesium, Niacin, and Zinc, marketed as "Diet Coke Plus".
As of April 2007, in Canada, the name "Coca-Cola Classic" has been changed back to "Coca-Cola" on its labeling on bottles and cans. According to a Coca-Cola customer-service representative, the word "Classic" has been taken off the cans, because "New Coke" is no longer in production, which eliminates the need to differentiate between the two. The formula has not been changed from Coca-Cola Classic.

Production

Formula
Main article: Coca-Cola formula
The exact formula of Coca-Cola is a famous trade secret. The original copy of the formula is held in SunTrust Bank's main vault in Atlanta. Its predecessor, the Trust Company, was the underwriter for the Coca-Cola Company's initial public offering in 1919. A popular myth states that only two executives have access to the formula, with each executive having only half the formula.[23] The truth is that while Coca-Cola does have a rule restricting access to only two executives, each knows the entire formula and others, in addition to the prescribed duo, have known the formulation process.[24]

Franchised production model

A Large Mexican bottle of Coca-Cola. The Mexican formula still uses cane sugar, and not high-fructose corn syrup.
The actual production and distribution of Coca-Cola follows a franchising model. The Coca-Cola Company only produces a syrup concentrate, which it sells to various bottlers throughout the world who hold Coca-Cola franchises for one or more geographical areas. The bottlers produce the final drink by mixing the syrup with filtered water and sugar (or artificial sweeteners)and then carbonate it before filling it into cans and bottles, which the bottlers then sell and distribute to retail stores, vending machines, restaurants and food service distributors.[25]
The Coca-Cola Company owns minority shares in some of its largest franchisees, like Coca-Cola Enterprises, Coca-Cola Amatil, Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC) and Coca-Cola FEMSA, but fully independent bottlers produce almost half of the volume sold in the world. Since independent bottlers add sugar and sweeteners, the sweetness of the drink differs in various parts of the world, to cater for local tastes.