Coca-Cola was born on may 8th, 1886 at the hands of Dr. John Smith Pemberton. In the laboratory of his house at 107 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Georgia he finally settled on the syrup later to be known as Coca-Cola. 1. John Pemberton was born in Knoxville, Georgia in 1831. At the age of 17, he attended the Botanical Medicine School of the State of Georgia. 2. After school he owned a drug store in Columbus, Georgia and fought for the confederacy in the Civil War. During the war he became addicted to morphine from an injury. 3. After the war ended, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia and kept up his pharmacy business at home.
He created such patent medicines as Globe flower Cough Syrup, Extract of Stillingia, Triple Liver Pills, Lemon & Orange Elixer, and French wine of Coca. The latter, being very similar to the “Vin Mariani” created by a private industrialist, Angelo Mariani, was inevitably the biggest seller. The “Vin Mariani” was a cocaine laced Bordeaux wine, popular throughout the world. 4. French Wine of coca included cocaine as well as caffeine from the kola nut found in a tree from Africa.
It was sold as a cure for nervous disorders, disturbances of internal plumbing and impotency. 5. 1. www. goecities. com 2. ww. sodafountain. om 3. www. tangaworld. com 4. www. geocities. com 5. www. stanford. com In November 1885, Pemberton decided to remove the wine and offer it as a syrup based medicine or a fountain drink, after Atlanta voted to become a dry city effective July 1886. 6. He began experimenting. When he started out the overall taste was very bitter due to the caffeine and cocaine. He added a lot of sugar to cover these flavors, but that proved to make it a very sickening kind of sweet. TO counter-balance that he added various fruit flavors and citric acids.
The final products ingredients included: 1 oz. Citric Caffeine, 1oz. Ext. Vanilla, 2 oz. Flavoring, 4 oz. F. E. Coco, Caramel Sufficient, 3 oz. Citric Acid, 1 Qt. Lime Juice, 30 lbs. Sugar, & 2 gal. Water. The flavoring was made of 80 Oil Orange, 120 Oil Lemon, 40 Oil Nutmeg, 1 Qt. Alcohol, 40 Oil Cinnamon, 20 Oil Coriander, & 40 Oil Neroli. The original directions were quite short and simple. They read as follows: Mix Caffeine Acid and Lime Juice 1 Qt. Boiling water add vanilla and flavoring when cool. Let stand for 24 hours. 7 A few months later he finally settled on the final recipe of what would later be known as Coca-Cola.
Frank Robinson and David Roe were introduced into a artnership with Pemberton a few months before he created the final product. Instead of Robinson and Roe selling him a device that was able to print two colors with the same pressing, he sold 6. www. stanford. com 7. www. sodafountain. com them on his product. The three of them along with an old partner of Pembertons, Ed Holland, created the original Coca-Cola corporation. 8. Robinson immediately took over advertising, manufacture, and promotion of the product. He is the one who created the white spencarian handwriting on red background.
Today it is the most widely recognized trademark in the world. The first ad for the new product was placed by Robison in the Atlanta daily Journal on May 29th, 1886. It read “Coca-Cola, delicious! Refreshing Invigorating! The new and Popular Soda Fountain Drink, containing properties of the wonderful coca plant and the famous cola nuts. For sale by Willis Venable and Nunnally & Rawson. ” Official Coca-Cola folklore states that it was merely a medicine mixed with plain water. 9. Not only does this advertisement state otherwise but it also gives the reason for the name.
Coca-Cola started off well but, Pemberton had serious problems involving health. He was severely addicted to orphine and cocaine and it wasnt long before this started to interfere with his business. 10. Pemberton cheated Robinson out of his interests in Coca-Cola and sold them to other individuals, which when added together totaled over 8. www. tangaworld. com 9. www. sodafountain. com 10. www. tangaworld. com 100%. Robison consulted a lawyer but wasnt able to win a case.
He did, however, convince his lawyers brother, Asa Candler, to buy the business. He then went to work for Candler in 1888. 1. Asa Candler was born on December 10th, 1851. Growing up Asa decided that he didnt want to attend school, so instead e became a apprentice to Dr. Best & Dr. Kirkpatrick in Carterville, to become a pharmacist. Three years later, he left the doctors and went to Atlanta with $1. 75 to his name, in hopes of finding some opportunities. Although he applied for many jobs, ironically one of which was Mr. Pembertons drugstore, he was unable to find work at first. Eventually he did find work in a position with a George Jefferson Howard and found himself as the stores chief clerk.
Although he had such a great position he quit shortly after promoted. Apparently he had fallen in love with his bosss 15 year old daughter, Lizzie. This had caused a falling out with his boss so he went in search for new work. Asa partnered up with Marcellus B. Hall and together they founded their own wholesale druggist shop. A year later he went back and married Lizzie and bought out his partner three more later. He tried to smooth things out with his father in law by selling him of the business.
The attempt was successful and 11. www. sodafountain. om the business had become one of the largest drug businesses in Atlanta by 1888. 12. Asa made a few changes to the original recipe to improve it. Around 1903 he removed the cocaine from the everage, after it was proven to be addictive. 13. Robison continued his part in advertising for the company. He is greatly responsible for the success in the product. By 1890, advertising and sales were equal. Asa employed many family members, one such was, his nephew, Sam Dobbs. Dobbs was working in advertising until his views began to conflict with that of Robinson. Asa, forced to chose between the two, went to his family.
Robinson dealt with it maturely and continued working until his retirement in. Candler later found out that he had made a mistake, when Dobbs stabbed him the back. 14. Candler was not knowledgeable in bottling and feared he would give Coca-Cola a bad name by creating a product not worthy of the name. Therefore he gave the bottling rights to two lawyers whom had gained his trust, Benjamin Franklin Thomas and Joseph Brown Whitehead. 15. They were allowed a gallon of syrup for only one dollar a gallon and any it was arranged to be kept at that price for any bottling company for forever.
The lawyers sold franchises to other bottlers and by 1919 every major city in the U. S. had a bottling plant. 16. 12. www. sodafountain. com 13. www. stanford. com 14. www. geocities. com 15. ww. stanford. com 16. www. sodafountain. com The Coca-Cola comp any had been going on with comparatively little legal problems. Unfortunately, their luck changed and by 1917 they were being attacked in many places. The contract with the bottling companies was hurting them because the cost to make one gallon of the syrup had increased significantly. They were fighting their former nickname of “dope”.
They were constantly fighting to keep their product from being banned because the cocaine was a serious health risk. Their biggest problem with the law came when the Federal Government claimed that they were reaking the 1906 Pure Food & Drug laws. They said that by having coca in the name and the beverage not containing cocaine was false advertisement. Coca-Cola proved that the flavor was now coming from the decocainized coca leaf and avoided being banned once again. 17. Asa was faced with many hardships in and outside of the company. In 1917 he was elected mayor of Atlanta and he discovered that his wife was dying of breast cancer.
With all that was going on at the time it was remarkable that he turned down an offer of $25 million for the company from two New York lawyers. He felt that he needed to how his wife his compassion for her and his children and his family views. He decided to give the company to his children on Christmas Day 1917. 18. The oldest son, Howard took control of the company with 17. www. geocities. com 18. www. tangaworld. com his rivaling and bickering siblings at the board. This environment was not healthy for the business. In 1919 Dobbs saw this as an opportunity and met with Earnest Woodruff.
Together they convinced the children that the best thing to do with the company was to take the previous offer of 1917. Dobbs then became the president and gained a 1/3 voting block. 19. The children never bothered to tell their father and therefor he found out about it while reading the newspaper. Candler was hurt by his childrens dishonesty to him, and he even broke into tears when discussing it to a one of his daughter-in-laws. For the last ten years of his life he would devote his studies to philanthropy. 20. Woodruff had a son named Robert, who was apparently a disgrace to his name.
He flunked out of high school and found work in the General Pipe and Foundery Company. He started to work his way up in the business but was fired for no reason. He then went to work as a salesman and again was ired for no reason after he started doing well in the business. His father offered him a job with the Coca-Cola company, so he took it because of his plans of marriage. It wasnt long before he found out that his father was the reason why his former jobs had fired him and he quit.
He found work in the White Motor Company and within a few years had worked his way up to vice-president. 19. www. tangaworl. om 20. sodafountain. com The Coca-Cola board, seeing this, offered him the presidency. Earnest vetoed the attempt after hearing that he wanted full reign of the company to do as he felt. Earnest ater rethought his decision and offered the position to his son. 21. The second Woodruff accomplished many things early on. He made service stations have the same rights and usage as retail outlets and invented the usage of the cooler. He demanded that all bottling companies issue a uniform drink. Those that did not comply were bought out or simply lost support from the company and eventually died away. 22.
Advertisement was still a very large portion of the businesses success and extremely influential to society. So much that the entire persona of Santa Clause was changed from a tall and gaunt man in blue to the one we know im as, short and fat dressed in red. 23. When WW II came around most of the popularity of the company as in Canada, Germany, and Cuba. During the war Woodruff decreed that every solder wearing a uniform was entitled to a Coca-Cola. He made this mission possible by setting up and running 64 new bottling plants throughout the world to ensure that they would be available to supply the soldiers.
This introduced the company in the world of marketing considerably and made many satisfied customers with returning soldiers. 24. 21. www. tangaworld. com 22. www. geocities. com 23. www. tangaworld. com 24. www. sodafountain. om Although Robert Woodruff retired in 1955, he kept control of the business through the Finance Committee. He lived to see many challenges such as Pepsi and many accomplishments such as the introductions of many new beverages such as Sprite, TaB, Mello Yello, Mr. Pibb, and Fresca.
On May 30th, 1980 Cuban, Roberto Goizueta, was honored with the position of president of the Coca-Cola company. Goizueta was one of the few people to ever know the secret formula because he was a chemist for the company. The secret had managed to only come to the knowledge of so few people because, starting with Asa giving it to his on, as each chemist died or retired he taught his successor In 1980 Diet Coke became the first soda produced by the company to share the namesake .
This was not only a big deal but fortunately it was a big success as well. He presided over one of the more successful campaigns in the companys history, the “Coke it is” campaign of 1982. Also in that year the Coca-Cola company bought Columbia Pictures for &750 million. At the moment the deal looked bad, but soon showed itself worthy when such movies as E. T. and Tootsie were produced. Sales shot up and brought in a great amount of profit. To end it, he sold it to Sony for $3. 4 billion. 25.