Soda Trivia
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110 free Soda trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
57 free soda trivia questions with answers. Soft drinks have a stranger history than the vending machine lets on. These 110 questions cover the whole fizzy family, not just Coca-Cola: the pharmacist's tonic that became Pepsi, the Waco drugstore where Dr Pepper was first poured, the mood stabilizer once advertised in 7 Up, the wartime German improvisation that produced Fanta, and the 79 days in 1985 when New Coke replaced the original. You will also meet the regional and international favorites: Moxie's gentian bite, Vernors and the Boston cooler, Big Red, Irn-Bru's forced name change, Inca Kola, Jarritos, ramune and its marble, plus the science of Joseph Priestley's first carbonated water, the pull-tab can, caffeine counts and the great pop-versus-soda-versus-coke divide. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and company history pages before publication, so the dates, names and figures hold up. Play it at a trivia night, share it with a friend who still says pop, or use it to settle an argument about what Mountain Dew originally meant.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what name was the cola created by a New Bern, North Carolina pharmacist in 1893 first sold?
Brad's Drink
Caleb Bradham sold it as Brad's Drink from 1893, renamed it Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and incorporated the Pepsi-Cola Company on Christmas Eve 1902.
Q 02Pepsi-Cola got its name in 1898 because its formula was said to include an essence of what?
The digestive enzyme pepsin
The name nodded to the digestive enzyme pepsin, as Bradham promoted the drink as a digestion aid; whether pepsin was ever in the formula is disputed.
Q 03What size nickel bottle did Depression-era Pepsi sell, twice what Coca-Cola offered?
12 ounces
The 'Nickel, Nickel' radio jingle looped endlessly on 'twelve full ounces, that's a lot', and profits doubled between 1936 and 1938.
Q 04PepsiCo won the right to sell Pepsi in the USSR in a 1972 barter deal for Western rights to which product?
Stolichnaya vodka
Pepsi took the Western rights to Stolichnaya vodka in exchange, becoming the first foreign product sanctioned for sale in the USSR; 'Pepsi-stroika' later punned on Gorbachev's reforms.
Q 05In which country did the 1992 'Pepsi Number Fever' promotion's 800,000 winning caps spark deadly riots?
The Philippines
In the Philippines, Pepsi printed the winning number 349 on 800,000 caps by mistake; the grand prize was one million pesos, and the riots that followed killed at least five people.
Q 06Which Hollywood star sat on Pepsi's board from 1959 to 1973 after her husband, its president, died?
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford, widow of Pepsi president Alfred Steele, joined the board in 1959 and made sure the drink appeared prominently in several of her later films.
Q 07Pharmacist Charles Alderton first mixed Dr Pepper at Morrison's drug store in which Texas city?
Waco
Customers at the soda fountain originally ordered the drink by asking for a 'Waco'.
Q 08Dr Pepper is advertised as a blend of how many flavors?
23
Dr Pepper is marketed as a blend of 23 flavors, a number printed on its cans and used in its advertising; the recipe itself is kept as a trade secret.
Q 09A rumor since the 1930s claims Dr Pepper contains which ingredient, something the company flatly denies?
Prune juice
The rumor that Dr Pepper contains prune juice has circulated since the 1930s despite the company's denials; it trades on prunes' laxative reputation.
Q 10According to a classic promotion, 'Dr Pepper Time' came at which three times of day?
10, 2 and 4
The 'Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2 and 4' slogan, introduced in 1927, drew on research suggesting energy slumped at about 10:30, 2:30 and 4:30.
Q 11After Dr Pepper sued in 1972, Coca-Cola renamed its imitation drink 'Peppo' to what?
Mr. Pibb
Coca-Cola launched Peppo in 1972 and renamed it Mr. Pibb the same year after Dr Pepper sued over the name; it became Pibb Xtra in 2001.
Q 12Before it was a soft drink, 'Mountain Dew' was Southern and Scots-Irish slang for what?
Moonshine
Mountain dew meant moonshine, homemade whiskey; the 1882 Irish song 'The Rare Old Mountain Dew' celebrates it, and early labels showed a barefoot hillbilly with a jug.
Q 13The Hartman brothers first developed Mountain Dew as a whiskey mixer in which state?
Tennessee
Barney and Ally Hartman of Knoxville, Tennessee, mixed it in the 1940s as a lemon-lime mixer for their bourbon after failing to find their favourite brand locally.
Q 21The orange Fanta that became the brand's standard flavour was first produced in 1955 in which city?
Naples
Orange Fanta was first made in Naples in 1955 by a local Coca-Cola bottler using locally grown oranges, and it became the brand's standard flavour worldwide.
Q 22Charles Hires wanted to call his drink 'root tea', but chose 'root beer' to appeal to which group?
Pennsylvania coal miners
A friend told Hires that 'root beer' would sell better to hard-drinking Pennsylvania coal miners than 'root tea'; the teetotal Hires debuted it at the 1876 Centennial Exposition.
Q 23The FDA banned the oil safrole in 1960, ending root beer's traditional reliance on which plant?
Sassafras
Q 14In what year did the Pepsi-Cola company acquire the Mountain Dew brand?
1964
Pepsi-Cola bought the Tip Corporation of Marion, Virginia in 1964; Tip had relaunched the drink in 1961, and Pepsi took it across the US and Canada.
Q 15A 12-ounce can of Mountain Dew contains roughly how much caffeine?
54 mg
A 12-ounce can of Mountain Dew has about 54 mg of caffeine, well above the roughly 38 mg in a can of Pepsi and more than half an 8.4-ounce Red Bull's 80 mg.
Q 16Until 1948, 7 Up's recipe contained which mood-stabilizing compound?
Lithium citrate
7 Up contained lithium citrate until 1948, and until 1936 was sold as '7 Up Lithiated Lemon Soda'; one theory ties the '7' to lithium's atomic mass of about 7.
Q 17What was the name of 7 Up's rooster mascot, animated by Disney in the 1950s?
Fresh-Up Freddie
Freddie taught viewers how to plan parties and even appeared in the ad breaks of the 1957 Zorro TV series.
Q 18The lemon-lime drink later renamed Sprite was developed in West Germany in 1959 under what name?
Fanta Klare Zitrone
Sprite began in 1959 as Fanta Klare Zitrone ('clear lemon Fanta') in West Germany; it reached the United States in 1961 as a rival to 7 Up, and its ads later coined 'lymon'.
Q 19Fanta's name was born when Max Keith told his German team to use their what?
Imagination
Keith told them to use their imagination, 'Fantasie' in German, and salesman Joe Knipp shot back 'Fanta!'; the drink was created when wartime trade embargoes cut off Coca-Cola syrup to Germany.
Q 20Wartime German Fanta was made from sugar beet, whey and which fruit by-product?
Apple pomace
Fanta's wartime recipe used apple pomace left over from cider presses, whey from cheese-making and whatever beet sugar could be had; many Germans used it to sweeten soups and stews.
Sassafras root bark, the traditional root beer flavouring, contains safrole, which the FDA banned in 1960 as a carcinogen; most makers switched to artificial flavouring or safrole-free sassafras extract.
Q 24Which state made Moxie its official soft drink in 2005?
Maine
Maine adopted Moxie as its official soft drink in 2005; the drink dates to 1876 as 'Moxie Nerve Food', and its name gave American English the word for spunk.
Q 25Moxie's famously bitter taste comes from an extract of which root?
Gentian
Moxie's bitterness comes from gentian root extract; creator Augustin Thompson claimed a rare South American plant, and E. B. White wrote that gentian root 'is the path to the good life'.
Q 26Canada Dry's popularity as a cocktail mixer took off during which period of American history?
Prohibition
During Prohibition (1920-33) Canada Dry's dry ginger ale masked the taste of bootleg liquor, and the 'Champagne of Ginger Ales' became a staple mixer.
Q 27Johann Jacob Schweppe founded his carbonated-water company in 1783 in which city?
Geneva
Schweppe, a German-born watchmaker, founded the firm in Geneva in 1783 and moved it to London in 1792; it received a British royal warrant in 1836.
Q 28Joseph Priestley made the first carbonated water in 1767 above a vat at what kind of Leeds business?
A brewery
Priestley suspended a bowl of water above the fermenting vats of a brewery next to his house in Leeds in 1767; the water took up the gas and tasted pleasantly tart.
Q 29Priestley's 1772 paper described 'impregnating water with fixed air' — the 18th-century term for which gas?
Carbon dioxide
'Fixed air', Joseph Black's name for carbon dioxide, was what Priestley made by dripping oil of vitriol, now called sulfuric acid, onto chalk.
Q 30Priestley gave Cook's second voyage a method for making carbonated water, wrongly hoping it might cure what?
Scurvy
Priestley hoped carbonated water might prevent scurvy on Cook's 1772 voyage; it did not, but his pamphlet on 'impregnating water with fixed air' won him the Royal Society's Copley Medal.