50 Fun Facts About Coca-Cola

Who invented Coca-Cola in 1886?

The Confederate veteran and morphine addict was looking for a substitute for the drug when Atlanta went dry, and adapted his French Wine Coca.

Where was Coca-Cola first sold, for five cents a glass, on May 8, 1886?

Atlanta and Fulton County had just passed prohibition, and Pemberton had turned his wine-and-coca tonic into an alcohol-free version.

Who created the Coca-Cola logo in its flowing Spencerian script?

He also thought up the name, and the script has barely changed since 1885.

Which two original ingredients gave the drink its name?

The kola nut supplied caffeine; the coca leaf supplied an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass until 1903.

In which year were fresh coca leaves removed from the formula?

The company still uses a cocaine-free coca extract processed by a single licensed chemical firm.

Which businessman bought the rights to Coca-Cola from Pemberton in 1888?

His total outlay for the whole enterprise came to about $2,300, and he incorporated The Coca-Cola Company in 1892.

Where was Coca-Cola first bottled, in March 1894?

Joseph Biedenharn did it at his candy company; Chattanooga got the first proper bottling company five years later.

For how much did Candler sign away control of bottling in 1899?

The contract fixed the bottle price at five cents and had no end date, which cost the company dearly for decades.

What picture inspired the contour bottle designed by Earl R. Dean in 1915?

Nobody at the Root Glass Company could find a coca leaf or kola nut in the encyclopaedia, so a cocoa pod had to do.

What choice was Earl Dean offered as a reward for designing the bottle?

He took the job at Root Glass; the bottle became the company standard by 1920.

Who became president of The Coca-Cola Company in 1923 and took the drink worldwide?

He also introduced the six-pack, so people would take Coke home rather than just drink it at the fountain.

In which year did Coca-Cola officially adopt the nickname 'Coke'?

The word was registered as a trademark in 1945, after decades of the company resisting it.

In which year did Coca-Cola first appear in cans?

The company had experimented with cans for troops in the Second World War but did not sell them commercially until then.

On what date was New Coke introduced?

The sweeter formula had beaten both regular Coke and Pepsi in taste tests, which turned out to be beside the point.

How many days after New Coke's launch did the company announce the return of the original formula?

The hotline had gone from 400 calls a day to more than 1,500, and a Seattle retiree had founded the Old Cola Drinkers of America.

Under what name did the returning original formula go on sale in July 1985?

New Coke lingered as Coke II until 2002, then came back briefly in 2019 to promote Stranger Things.

Which Netflix series prompted a limited return of the New Coke formula in 2019?

The show's third season is set in the summer of 1985, New Coke's brief moment in the sun.

Which rival's blind taste tests, launched in 1975, pushed Coca-Cola toward reformulating?

Consumers kept preferring the sweeter rival in sips, which is not the same as preferring it by the can.

Diet Coke, launched in 1982, was notable as what?

It briefly overtook Pepsi as America's number two soda in 2010, and its 1994 'Diet Coke Break' ad became a cultural moment.

How much caffeine is in a standard 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola?

The same can holds 39 grams of sugar, about ten teaspoons.

Where has the written secret formula been kept on public display since December 2011?

It had spent 86 years in a bank vault; the company says only two employees know the whole recipe and they never travel together.

What is the name given to the secret flavouring ingredient in the formula?

It is thought to be a mix of essential oils such as orange, lime, lemon and lavender.

Which radio programme announced in 2011 that it had found what might be Pemberton's original recipe?

The recipe came from a 1979 Atlanta Journal-Constitution photograph of a friend's handwritten notebook.

Which illustrator painted Coca-Cola's Santa Claus from 1931 onward?

He is often wrongly credited with inventing the red suit; his friend Lou Prentice was the first model, then he used himself.

Which elfin mascot did Sundblom create for Coke in 1942?

The elfin figure appeared in print ads for two decades, long before the lemon-lime drink borrowed the name in 1961.

Where was the 1971 'Hilltop' commercial, I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke, filmed?

At $250,000 it was the most expensive commercial ever made at the time, and Mad Men ended its run with it.

Which group took the full-length version of the Coke jingle to number one in the UK?

The Hillside Singers had a competing US hit; the New Seekers' version reached number seven in America.

Which television drama used the Hilltop commercial to end its final episode in 2015?

Creator Matthew Weiner said he wanted to end the show with the greatest commercial ever made.

As of 2012, which two countries were the only ones with no official Coca-Cola sales?

Myanmar came off the list in 2012; the company sells more than 1.8 billion servings a day everywhere else.

What does a yellow cap on a bottle of Coca-Cola indicate?

The Passover version uses sucrose instead of corn syrup; the drink was first certified kosher by an Atlanta rabbi in 1935.

What does Coca-Cola's Chinese name roughly mean?

The company entered China in the 1920s with no localised name and shopkeepers improvised some unfortunate ones first.

Fanta was created in 1940 in which country, when Coca-Cola syrup could no longer be imported?

Max Keith's team made it from whey and apple pomace; the modern orange version came from Naples in 1955.

Where does the name Fanta come from?

Keith told his team to use their Fantasie, and a salesman shouted the answer back.

In which year did Coca-Cola launch its lemon-lime rival to 7 Up?

The lemon-lime drink was the company's answer to 7 Up and became one of its bestsellers.

Which Hollywood studio did The Coca-Cola Company own from 1982 to 1989?

It sold the studio to Sony for $3 billion, having released Ghostbusters and Tootsie in the meantime.

Which British café chain did Coca-Cola agree to buy for £3.9 billion in 2018?

The company had bought Minute Maid in 1960 and now offers more than 500 brands.

As of 2024, which company was The Coca-Cola Company's largest shareholder?

Warren Buffett's firm held around 9 percent, and Buffett claims to drink five Cokes a day.

What is The Coca-Cola Company's ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange?

The company was founded in January 1892 and remains headquartered in Atlanta.

In which year did the original World of Coca-Cola museum open in Atlanta?

It drew about nine million visitors before moving to Pemberton Place near the Georgia Aquarium in 2007.

Roughly how many flavours can visitors sample at the World of Coca-Cola?

Some are discontinued products, and the bitter Italian aperitif Beverly is the one everyone dares their friends to try.

The 'Share a Coke' campaign, printing first names on bottles, began in 2011 in which country?

It used each market's 250 most popular names and later spread to more than 80 countries. In the US it is credited with reversing more than a decade of falling Coke sales.

Which Pittsburgh Steeler tosses his jersey to a boy in the 1979 'Hey Kid, Catch!' commercial?

The ad won a Clio and got its biggest audience during Super Bowl XIV in 1980, a game the Steelers happened to win. Troy Polamalu parodied it for Coke Zero in 2009.

The Coca-Cola Freestyle fountain's dispensing technology was designed by the inventor of what?

Dean Kamen did it in exchange for Coca-Cola distributing his Slingshot water purifier. The cabinet itself came from Italian car designer Pininfarina.

Cherry Coke was first tested on visitors to the 1982 World's Fair in which city?

It reached stores in summer 1985, the first flavoured Coke and only the third Coca-Cola variant after Diet Coke. Soda fountains had been adding cherry syrup unofficially for decades.

In which year did Coca-Cola Zero launch, the company's largest product launch in 22 years?

The idea came out of the Spanish branch. It was pitched as tasting just like regular Coke, unlike Diet Coke, and was renamed Coca-Cola Zero Sugar from 2016.

Clear 'White Coke' disguised as vodka was made after World War II for which Soviet marshal?

He did not want to be seen drinking a symbol of American imperialism. The bottles, given via Eisenhower, even had a red star on the cap.

Coca-Cola became the first commercial sponsor of the Olympics at which city's 1928 Games?

It has sponsored every Games since, including the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in its hometown.

Which local soft drink outsold Coke in Peru, leading The Coca-Cola Company to buy the brand in 1999?

Peru is one of the rare markets where Coke lost to a local rival; Sweden's julmust also beats it every Christmas, and Scotland's Irn-Bru did until 2005.

Who was Coca-Cola's first advertising spokeswoman, a young Boston actress featured from 1895?

Before Santa Claus, Coke sold itself with smartly dressed young women. The red-suited Santa came in the 1930s, and White Rock ginger ale had used him first anyway.

A Coca-Cola fountain dispenser first flew aboard the Space Shuttle on mission STS-63 in which year?

Officially a Fluids Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus, it tested whether fizzy drinks can be mixed in orbit without foaming. Its successor on STS-77 supplied 1.65 litres each of Coke and Diet Coke.