History of Coca-cola: a Scholarly Perspective

Coca-Cola history started in 1886 when the inquisitiveness of an Atlanta pharmacist, Dr. John S. Pemberton, guided him to create a unique tasting soft drink that could be sold at soda fountains. He produced a flavored syrup, took it to his locality dispensary, where it was mixed with carbonated water and considered “excellent” by those who sampled it. Dr. Pemberton’s partner and bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, is accredited with naming the drink “Coca‑Cola” as well as designing the trademarked, distinctive script, still used today.

The first portions of Coca‑Cola were sold for 5 cents per glass. Throughout the first year, sales averaged a modest nine servings per day in Atlanta. Today, daily servings of Coca‑Cola drinks are calculated at 1.9 billion worldwide. Before to his death in 1888, just two years after developing what was to become the world’s #1-selling sparkling drink, Dr. Pemberton sold shares of his business to various people, with the majority of the interest sold to Atlanta businessman, Asa G. Candler. Under Mr. Candler’s leadership, distribution of Coca‑Cola expanded to soda fountains beyond Atlanta.

In 1894, fascinated by the growing demand for Coca‑Cola and the wish to make the beverage convenient, Joseph Biedenharn installed bottling machinery in the rear of his Mississippi soda fountain, becoming the first to put Coca‑Cola in bottles. Large scale bottling was made achievable just five years later, when in 1899, three innovative businessmen in Chattanooga, Tennessee protected exclusive rights to bottle and sell Coca‑Cola. The three entrepreneurs purchased the bottling rights from Asa Candler for just $1. Benjamin Thomas, Joseph Whitehead and John Lupton established what became the Coca‑Cola worldwide bottling system.

Amongst the major encounters for early bottlers, were replications of the beverage by competitors combined with a lack of packaging constancy among the 1,000 bottling plants at the time. The bottlers agreed that a distinguishing beverage desired a standard and unique bottle, and in 1916, the bottlers approved the unique shape bottle. The new Coca‑Cola bottle was so unique it could be acknowledged in the dark and it efficiently set the brand separately from competition. The contoured Coca‑Cola bottle was trademarked in 1977. Over the years, the Coca‑Cola bottle has been encouragement for artists across the world — a sampling of which can be noticed at World of Coca‑Cola in Atlanta.

The first marketing struggles in Coca‑Cola history were implemented through coupons endorsing free samples of the drink. Considered an innovative approach back in 1887, couponing was followed by newspaper advertising and the distribution of advertising items bearing the Coca‑Cola script to participating dispensaries.

Experts have long considered in the correlation between happiness and wellness, and Coca‑Cola is proud to have played a part in happy events around the world. In Atlanta, check out the Coca‑Cola Theater at World of Coca‑Cola and see the magic that drives into every bottle of Coca-Cola. For many years, Coca-Cola was tremendously fruitful by selling a single, generally unchanged, product. When the enterprise wanted to be brave in the eighties by introducing a new variant, New Coke, it didn’t work out. Terror of failure is said to have been restrictive the Atlanta-based enterprise's enthusiasm to experiment since then. Experts often speak of the "New Coke Syndrome."