WHAT DON’T WE KNOW ABOUT COCA-COLA?
In these series we will look at some of the Coca-Cola secrets .
Part 1
INGREDIENTS AND FORMULA
In 1885, a pharmacist named John Pemberton created a tonic that would become known as Coca-Cola. Almost 150 years later, there is still much that remains unknown about the popular beverage, from its exact ingredients to its shady business practices and impact on the environment.
Colonel John Pemberton, who was injured during the Civil War and became addicted to morphine, sought a substitute for the drug. As a pharmacist, he registered Pemberton’s French Wine Cola in 1885, a nerve tonic that contained alcohol. However, the following year, prohibition laws were passed in America, prompting Pemberton and his colleagues to come up with a non-alcoholic version. “Coca-Cola, the Temperance Drink” was born.
INGREDIENTS AND FORMULA
The company has kept the drink’s key ingredients secret for over a century, but whispers that it contains the drug cocaine have persisted.
Pemberton used five ounces of coca leaf in every gallon of syrup, but as the company grew, the formula changed, and it was thought that one glass of the drink contained as much as nine milligrams of the drug.
The entire formula for the drink remains a mystery and is guarded in a vault in a museum in Atlanta. The ingredients are shipped to factories as numbered merchandise, with No.1 being sugar (in the form of sucrose), No.2 caramel colouring, No.3 caffeine, and No.4 phosphoric acid. Ingredients 5 through 9 are unknown, while “7x” is particularly mysterious. Factory workers are told what quantities to use for each number and given instructions on the mixing procedure
In 1903, early sales had been high among the African-American community, largely due to them being prohibited from drinking at public water fountains. However, the white community complained that they feared the ingredients would affect the behaviour of African-Americans, prompting changes. By 1929, Coca-Cola began to use a cocaine-free coca-leaf extract, and today, the only company authorised by the government to import and process coca leaves is Stepan, which extracts cocaine from leaves before selling them to Coca-Cola
The formulas for the various drinks now available are so closely guarded that when, in 2006, a secretary at Coca-Cola’s global headquarters stole a vial of a new drink, which she planned to sell to rival Pepsi for $1.5 million, Pepsi informed Coca-Cola, and FBI agents were on hand to arrest her.
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