50 free Coca-Cola trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Coca-Cola trivia questions with answers. Coca-Cola started as a five-cent pharmacy drink in 1886 and became the most recognised brand on Earth. This quiz covers the story: John Pemberton and Asa Candler, Frank Robinson's script logo, the cocaine years, the first bottlers, the contour bottle, Robert Woodruff's global expansion, Santa Claus and the polar bears, the Hilltop ad, New Coke's 79 days, Diet Coke, Fanta's wartime birth and the modern company with 500 brands in 200 countries. It starts with Coca Cola trivia anyone can answer and works up to the details of formula vaults and bottling contracts. Difficulty ratings are shown so you can pick your battles. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the drink, the company, the formula and the campaigns, and each question carries its source.
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Q 01Who invented Coca-Cola in 1886?
John Stith Pemberton
The Confederate veteran and morphine addict was looking for a substitute for the drug when Atlanta went dry, and adapted his French Wine Coca.
Q 02Where was Coca-Cola first sold, for five cents a glass, on May 8, 1886?
Jacobs' Pharmacy in Atlanta
Atlanta and Fulton County had just passed prohibition, and Pemberton had turned his wine-and-coca tonic into an alcohol-free version.
Q 03Who created the Coca-Cola logo in its flowing Spencerian script?
Frank Robinson, the bookkeeper
He also thought up the name, and the script has barely changed since 1885.
Q 04Which two original ingredients gave the drink its name?
Coca leaves and kola nuts
The kola nut supplied caffeine; the coca leaf supplied an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass until 1903.
Q 05In which year were fresh coca leaves removed from the formula?
1903
The company still uses a cocaine-free coca extract processed by a single licensed chemical firm.
Q 06Which businessman bought the rights to Coca-Cola from Pemberton in 1888?
Asa Griggs Candler
His total outlay for the whole enterprise came to about $2,300, and he incorporated The Coca-Cola Company in 1892.
Q 07Where was Coca-Cola first bottled, in March 1894?
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Joseph Biedenharn did it at his candy company; Chattanooga got the first proper bottling company five years later.
Q 08For how much did Candler sign away control of bottling in 1899?
One dollar
The contract fixed the bottle price at five cents and had no end date, which cost the company dearly for decades.
Q 09What picture inspired the contour bottle designed by Earl R. Dean in 1915?
A cocoa pod in an encyclopaedia
Nobody at the Root Glass Company could find a coca leaf or kola nut in the encyclopaedia, so a cocoa pod had to do.
Q 10What choice was Earl Dean offered as a reward for designing the bottle?
A $500 bonus or a job for life
He took the job at Root Glass; the bottle became the company standard by 1920.
Q 11Who became president of The Coca-Cola Company in 1923 and took the drink worldwide?
Robert W. Woodruff
He also introduced the six-pack, so people would take Coke home rather than just drink it at the fountain.
Q 12In which year did Coca-Cola officially adopt the nickname 'Coke'?
1941
The word was registered as a trademark in 1945, after decades of the company resisting it.
Q 13In which year did Coca-Cola first appear in cans?
1955
The company had experimented with cans for troops in the Second World War but did not sell them commercially until then.
Q 21Where has the written secret formula been kept on public display since December 2011?
A vault at Atlanta's World of Coca-Cola
It had spent 86 years in a bank vault; the company says only two employees know the whole recipe and they never travel together.
Q 22What is the name given to the secret flavouring ingredient in the formula?
Merchandise 7X
It is thought to be a mix of essential oils such as orange, lime, lemon and lavender.
Q 23Which radio programme announced in 2011 that it had found what might be Pemberton's original recipe?
This American Life
Q 14On what date was New Coke introduced?
April 23, 1985
The sweeter formula had beaten both regular Coke and Pepsi in taste tests, which turned out to be beside the point.
Q 15How many days after New Coke's launch did the company announce the return of the original formula?
79
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.
Q 16Under what name did the returning original formula go on sale in July 1985?
Coca-Cola Classic
New Coke lingered as Coke II until 2002, then came back briefly in 2019 to promote Stranger Things.
Q 17Which Netflix series prompted a limited return of the New Coke formula in 2019?
Stranger Things
The show's third season is set in the summer of 1985, New Coke's brief moment in the sun.
Q 18Which rival's blind taste tests, launched in 1975, pushed Coca-Cola toward reformulating?
The Pepsi Challenge
Consumers kept preferring the sweeter rival in sips, which is not the same as preferring it by the can.
Q 19Diet Coke, launched in 1982, was notable as what?
The first new brand to use the Coca-Cola trademark since 1886
It briefly overtook Pepsi as America's number two soda in 2010, and its 1994 'Diet Coke Break' ad became a cultural moment.
Q 20How much caffeine is in a standard 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola?
34 mg
The same can holds 39 grams of sugar, about ten teaspoons.
The recipe came from a 1979 Atlanta Journal-Constitution photograph of a friend's handwritten notebook.
Q 24Which illustrator painted Coca-Cola's Santa Claus from 1931 onward?
Haddon Sundblom
He is often wrongly credited with inventing the red suit; his friend Lou Prentice was the first model, then he used himself.
Q 25Which elfin mascot did Sundblom create for Coke in 1942?
Sprite Boy
The elfin figure appeared in print ads for two decades, long before the lemon-lime drink borrowed the name in 1961.
Q 26Where was the 1971 'Hilltop' commercial, I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke, filmed?
On a hill outside Rome, Italy
At $250,000 it was the most expensive commercial ever made at the time, and Mad Men ended its run with it.
Q 27Which group took the full-length version of the Coke jingle to number one in the UK?
The New Seekers
The Hillside Singers had a competing US hit; the New Seekers' version reached number seven in America.
Q 28Which television drama used the Hilltop commercial to end its final episode in 2015?
Mad Men
Creator Matthew Weiner said he wanted to end the show with the greatest commercial ever made.
Q 29As of 2012, which two countries were the only ones with no official Coca-Cola sales?
Cuba and North Korea
Myanmar came off the list in 2012; the company sells more than 1.8 billion servings a day everywhere else.
Q 30What does a yellow cap on a bottle of Coca-Cola indicate?
It is kosher for Passover
The Passover version uses sucrose instead of corn syrup; the drink was first certified kosher by an Atlanta rabbi in 1935.