On March 12, 1886, the first bottles of Coca-Cola went on sale.
In 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton was working on a non-alcoholic, “nerve medicine” to sell in his drug store. He boiled a concoction of herbs, coca leaves, and kola nuts in his back yards. He then added tap water to the “syrup”. One day a customer with a stomach ache asked for “fizzy water” to be added to it. Pemberton was in poor health so he sold the recipe for the syrup to a collection of drug store owners for $350. He died in 1888. Asa Candler bought out his fellow druggists and registered the Coca-Cola trademark. He was great at marketing and would give gifts like clocks and calendars with the Coca-Cola logo to stores that bought the syrup. By 1892, he was selling over 35,000 gallons of the syrup per year. Candler resisted bottling the drink for years for fear of lawsuits from exploding bottles. He changed his mind after a Mississippi candy store owner had success with bottles. Candler opened Coke’s first bottling plant five years later. In 1915, Coke hired an Indiana glass company to design a distinctive bottle. It was loosely based on the shape of the cola nut. Uncle 4 pp. 207-208
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