Photo: uhltank/Flickr
On this day in…
1886
Coca-Cola is first sold to the public at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, GA.
The Backstory
Perhaps this fact is less surprising than it appears on the face of it, but the history of Coca-Cola, the beverage, intersects with the history of Prohibition and that of soda fountains. But this needs explaining.
A Tennessee native named John Stith Pemberton moved the laboratory arm of his business, the J. S. Pemberton Company (which was, in essence, a drug company) to Atlanta, GA, in 1869. Pemberton’s interests in researching and testing herbal remedies led to the development of his French Wine Coca, an alcoholic drink meant to help with “mental exertion.” But that beverage was soon deemed illegal after the passage of prohibition legislation in Atlanta and Fulton County circa 1886.
Apparently undaunted, Pemberton developed a non-alcoholic version of his French Wine Coca by blending coca extracts with cola nuts, sorghum and other ingredients. He claimed that the resulting sweet brown syrup could cure morphine addiction, headaches and impotence, among other ailments.
Coca-Cola was initially sold as a patent medicine, but mixed with soda water and served in a glass at soda fountains, then quite popular in America due to the collective belief that carbonated water was good for you.
According to Our Georgia History, Pemberton sent “samples of the syrup to Willis Venable, who leased the bottom floor of Jacob’s Pharmacy (in Atlanta)…Venable began serving the mixture to customers on May 8, 1886.”
We’re guessing that Coke drinkers still believe Coke cures headaches. No comment on the rest of Pemberton’s original claims…