Coca Cola was invented in the 19th century by American John Pemberton, who firstly made it like a medicine bought without a prescription. After some time the new drink become famous and now is one of the leathers among the soft drinks all over the world. Today Coca-Cola is produced as concentrated syrup, which is delivered to multiple franchise companies that bottle and distribute it on the market. There are also and several drinks, which are named Coca-Cola but have different taste. The most popular and widespread form of these is dietary Coca-Cola, known as Coca-Cola light. Furthermore Diet Coke, the company produces Coca-Cola with added coffee extract, vanilla flavor, Coca-Cola Cherry, Coca-Cola Lemon and free Coke – Coca Cola without caffeine.
The famous drink was invented in Columbus initially as a combination of wine and cocaine, called Coca French wine Pemberton. After the prohibition of alcohol in Georgia in 1886, the wine in the recipe was replaced with non-alcoholic syrup. The first sales were made on May 8, 1886 the pharmacy “Jacob’s Pharmacy” in Atlanta, and the first eight months are sold only nine cups per day. Carbonated soft drink became popular and the fact that at this time in the USA people believed that soft drinks are very good for the health. Coca Cola left America for the first time in 1900, when Charles Howard Candler took a bottle of syrup when he went to England. A little later in Atlanta was received order for five gallons of syrup, which was the first exported quantity.
There is a myth that only two persons know the recipe, and each of them knows only the half of it.
The name Coca-Cola comes from leaves and cola fruit, used as flavoring. The main ingredients are water and sugar. Other components are suspected caramel, caffeine, phosphoric, acid, juice or lime butter and vanilla. Nowadays, however, in the USA Coca-Cola is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. If you taste Coca-Cola in different countries you can feel that the taste is a little bit different. Depends on the local tastes, Coca-Cola is more sweet or not.
Besides cocaine, another controversial ingredient of Coca-Cola is caffeine. Caffeine in Coca-Cola is the subject of litigation since 1920's. In August 2005 a liter Coca-Cola contains a maximum of 150 milligrams of caffeine. For comparison the same amount of coffee contains between 280 and 750 milligrams of caffeine.
It doesn’t matter what specialists say, the truth is that Coca-Cola is, and will be many more years with us!
