60 Fun Facts About Soda

Under what name was the cola created by a New Bern, North Carolina pharmacist in 1893 first sold?

Caleb Bradham's drink was renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898 and the company was incorporated on Christmas Eve 1902.

Pepsi-Cola got its name in 1898 because its formula was said to include an essence of what?

Early ads called it 'The Pepsin Drink' and claimed it relieved indigestion, headaches and drowsiness.

What size nickel bottle did Depression-era Pepsi sell, twice what Coca-Cola offered?

The 'Nickel, Nickel' radio jingle looped endlessly on 'twelve full ounces, that's a lot', and profits doubled between 1936 and 1938.

PepsiCo won the right to sell Pepsi in the USSR in a 1972 barter deal for Western rights to which product?

The deal made Pepsi the first foreign product sanctioned for sale in the USSR, and 'Pepsi-stroika' later became a pun on Gorbachev's reforms.

In which country did the 1992 'Pepsi Number Fever' promotion's 800,000 winning caps spark deadly riots?

The grand prize was one million pesos, and the botched draw led to riots and five deaths.

Which Hollywood star sat on Pepsi's board from 1959 to 1973 after her husband, its president, died?

She had married Pepsi president Alfred Steele and made sure the drink turned up prominently in several of her later films.

Pharmacist Charles Alderton first mixed Dr Pepper at Morrison's drug store in which Texas city?

Customers at the soda fountain originally ordered the drink by asking for a 'Waco'.

The Dr Pepper name was first used commercially in 1885 — how long before Coca-Cola was introduced?

It went national at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and the period after 'Dr' was dropped for good in 1950.

A rumor since the 1930s claims Dr Pepper contains which ingredient, something the company flatly denies?

One theory blames a rival's deliveryman for starting the story, playing on the fruit's laxative reputation.

According to a classic promotion, 'Dr Pepper Time' came at which three times of day?

A wartime radio show called The 10-2-4 Ranch, featuring the Sons of the Pioneers, spread the slogan across the South.

After Dr Pepper sued in 1972, Coca-Cola renamed its imitation drink 'Peppo' to what?

Both drinks fall into the 'pepper soda' category, which the FDA has ruled is distinct from cola.

Before it was a soft drink, 'Mountain Dew' was Southern and Scots-Irish slang for what?

The 1882 Irish folk song 'The Rare Old Mountain Dew' used the term, and early labels showed a barefoot hillbilly with a jug.

The Hartman brothers first developed Mountain Dew as a whiskey mixer in which state?

The Hartmans wanted a lemon-lime mixer for their bourbon and could not find their favorite brand in Knoxville.

In what year did the Pepsi-Cola company acquire the Mountain Dew brand?

Pepsi bought the Tip Corporation of Marion, Virginia, which had relaunched the drink in 1961, and took it across the US and Canada.

A 12-ounce can of Mountain Dew contains roughly how much caffeine?

That is well above the 38 mg in a can of Pepsi, though still short of the 80 mg starting point for energy drinks like Red Bull.

Until 1936, 7 Up's recipe was advertised as containing which mood-stabilizing compound?

For a time it was sold as '7up Lithiated Lemon Soda', and one theory ties the '7' to lithium's atomic mass.

What was the name of 7 Up's rooster mascot, animated by Disney in the 1950s?

Freddie taught viewers how to plan parties and even appeared in the ad breaks of the 1957 Zorro TV series.

The lemon-lime drink later renamed Sprite was developed in West Germany in 1959 under what name?

It reached the United States in 1961 as a rival to 7 Up, and its ads later coined the word 'lymon'.

Fanta's name was born when Max Keith told his German team to use their what?

The German word is 'Fantasie', and salesman Joe Knipp shot back 'Fanta!'.

Wartime German Fanta was made from sugar beet, whey and which fruit by-product?

Sugar was so scarce that many Germans used the drink to sweeten soups and stews rather than drinking it.

The orange Fanta that became the brand's standard flavour was first produced in 1955 in which city?

A local bottler used locally grown oranges, and the classic ringed bottle dates from those years.

Charles Hires wanted to call his drink 'root tea', but chose 'root beer' to appeal to which group?

Hires was a teetotaler who debuted the drink at the 1876 Centennial Exposition and later fought a boycott by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

The FDA banned the oil safrole in 1960, ending root beer's traditional reliance on which plant?

Most commercial root beers switched to artificial flavoring, though safrole-free extracts of the real thing exist.

Which state made Moxie its official soft drink in 2005?

The drink dates to about 1876 and its name gave American English the word for spunk and determination.

Moxie's famously bitter taste comes from an extract of which root?

Creator Augustin Thompson claimed it came from a rare unnamed South American plant; E. B. White called it 'the path to the good life'.

Canada Dry's popularity as a cocktail mixer took off during which period of American history?

Its flavor helped mask homemade liquor, and by 1930 sales had jumped from two million to ten million bottles a year.

Johann Jacob Schweppe founded his carbonated-water company in 1783 in which city?

The German watchmaker moved the business to London in 1792, and the brand has held a British royal warrant since 1836.

Joseph Priestley made the first carbonated water in 1767 above a vat at what kind of Leeds business?

He found the water had a pleasant taste and served it to friends, but never tried to make money from it.

Priestley's 1772 paper described 'impregnating water with fixed air' — the 18th-century term for which gas?

He made the gas by dripping oil of vitriol, now called sulfuric acid, onto chalk.

Priestley gave Cook's second voyage a method for making carbonated water, wrongly hoping it might cure what?

He has been called the father of the soft drink, and the Royal Society gave him the Copley Medal in 1773.

Early bottles of Crush contained what added ingredient to create a 'fresh squeezed' illusion?

The drink debuted in 1911 as Ward's Orange-Crush, 29 years before Fanta, and the pulp vanished from bottles decades ago.

In what year did Pepsi launch the Pepsi Challenge blind taste tests?

Later controlled studies found only modest differences between the two colas, and serving temperature may have skewed results.

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

ABC's Peter Jennings interrupted General Hospital to break the news, and the company hotline took 31,600 calls in two days.

What code name did Coca-Cola give the secret effort that developed New Coke?

It was named for a photo of Kansas journalist William Allen White drinking a Coke that hung on several executives' walls.

Which world leader, a longtime Coke drinker, called New Coke a sign of capitalist decadence?

CEO Roberto Goizueta's father agreed, the only time, Goizueta said, his father ever sided with the man he had fled Cuba to escape.

Big Red's flavor, often mistaken for bubble gum, is actually vanilla combined with which two citrus oils?

It began in 1937 as Sun Tang Red Cream Soda and only became Big Red in 1969 after a golf caddy called it that.

A.G. Barr changed the name of Iron Brew to Irn-Bru in 1946 largely because of what?

The drink was neither brewed nor rich in iron, so a literal name would no longer pass; it still reportedly sells 20 cans a second in Scotland.

Peru's Inca Kola gets its distinctive flavor mainly from which plant?

British immigrant Joseph Robinson Lindley launched it in 1935 for the 400th anniversary of Lima's founding.

The very first Jarritos, launched in Mexico in 1950, was what flavor?

Founder Francisco Hill soon developed the first tamarind soda in Mexico, and the name means 'little jug'.

The Japanese marble-bottle soda ramune takes its name from which English word?

A Scottish pharmacist introduced it in Kobe in 1884, and by law only small and medium firms may make it in Japan.

Yale chemistry professor Benjamin Silliman started selling soda water in 1806 in which city?

He used a Nooth apparatus, and although his business eventually failed he helped make soda water an American habit.

In which US region is 'coke' commonly used as a generic word for any soft drink?

The 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey found 'soda' leading nationally, 'pop' at 25 percent and generic 'coke' at 12 percent.

The earliest known use of 'pop' for a fizzy drink is an 1812 letter by which poet?

He told his wife it was 'called pop because pop goes the cork when it is drawn'; 'soda pop' followed in 1863.

Ermal Fraze was inspired to invent the pull-tab after being forced to open a can at a picnic with what?

He stayed up all night working on the idea and patented the pull-top can in 1963.

Which company was the first to sell soft drinks in all-aluminum cans?

It had also been the first to put a soft drink in a tin can, in 1954.

Coca-Cola picked the name of its 1963 diet cola Tab from over 185,000 four-letter words generated by what?

The shortlist of about twenty included 'Tabb', chosen for the pun on keeping tabs on your weight.

Faygo's first three flavors came from recipes the founding brothers had used in Russia for what?

Ben and Perry Feigenson were bakers, and the name Faygo replaced Feigenson Brothers in 1921 because it was shorter.

A 'Boston cooler' is a float made with vanilla ice cream and which Detroit ginger ale?

First served in 1866, it is the oldest surviving ginger ale in the United States.

In the 1950s South, RC Cola paired with which snack made a classic 'working man's lunch'?

The company had begun as a Georgia grocery whose owner refused to keep buying Coca-Cola syrup at full price.

Coca-Cola created Tab in 1963 after the success of which rival, then the only sugarless soda?

Tab hung on until 2020, long after Diet Coke made it an afterthought in 1982.

What sent the Pepsi-Cola Company into bankruptcy in 1923?

Charles Guth of the candy chain Loft, Inc. later bought the assets and reformulated the drink. Pepsi is now the world's second most valuable soft-drink brand.

PepsiCo was created in 1965 by merging Pepsi-Cola with which snack company?

That is why the company sells Doritos and Lay's chips alongside its colas.

A vitamin-enriched 'Pepsi Perfect' appeared in which 1989 film, set partly in 2015?

Pepsi actually released a limited run of Pepsi Perfect bottles in October 2015 to mark the date Marty McFly arrives in the future.

What was Crystal Pepsi, launched in test markets in 1992?

It grabbed a full percentage point of US soft-drink sales in its first year, then died in 1993 after Coca-Cola launched Tab Clear as a deliberate 'kamikaze' spoiler. Fans got it revived briefly in 2016.

Which product did Coca-Cola launch in December 1992 as an admitted 'kamikaze' attack on Crystal Pepsi?

Both clear colas were gone within about a year, which was rather the point.

How many Pepsi Points did a 1996 commercial jokingly price a Harrier jump jet at?

John Leonard sent 15 labels and a cheque for $700,008.50, buying the rest at 10 cents a point. Judge Kimba Wood ruled no reasonable person could think it a real offer, and Pepsi re-aired the ad with 'Just Kidding'.

What was the 2022 Netflix documentary about the man who tried to claim a fighter jet with soda loyalty points?

Pepsi never cashed his cheque, and the court called the commercial mere puffery.

Coca-Cola grew out of Pemberton's French Wine Coca, a tonic inspired by which successful coca wine?

When Atlanta passed prohibition in 1886, Pemberton reworked the tonic into a non-alcoholic 'temperance drink'.

Coca-Cola was first sold for five cents a glass on 8 May 1886 at which Atlanta business?

Pemberton ran the first advertisement three weeks later in the Atlanta Journal.

Before securing the Coca-Cola name in 1888, Asa Candler sold his version as 'Koke' and what else?

Pemberton's son Charley controlled the name; Candler reportedly bought the rights soon after Pemberton's funeral.