This Man is a Hero!!!

Over the last one hundred and thirty
years the Coca-Cola Company has
grown into one of the world’slargest
companies. The first Chief Executive of
the company Dr. John Pemberton was
looking for a quick cure for his
headache when he concocted the Coca
Cola formula in May 1886.

UNTIL 1905, the soft drink, marketed
as a tonic, contained extracts of
cocaine as well as the caffeine-rich
kola nut. Pharmacist, John Pemberton
was born in Knoxville, Georgia. He
graduated from Southern Botanico
Medical College of Georgia in 1850
and briefly practiced as a traditional
steam doctor, who used steam baths,
herbs, and other products to restore
the body to proper health. Pemberton
later obtained a degree in pharmacy
from a school in Philadelphia. In 1855,
Pemberton moved to Columbus,
Georgia, where he practiced primarily
as a druggist for fourteen years. In
May 1862, Pemberton enlisted as a
first lieutenant in the Confederate
Army where organized Pemberton’s
Calvary to guard the town.
Local and wealthy physician
During a gun battle he was shot and
cut with a saber across the chest. He
used morphine for the pain and
eventually became a morphine addict.
For five years after the war,
Pemberton worked as a partner with a
local and wealthy physician. At the
time, there was a large demand for
home remedies and tonics in the
United States, especially in large cities.
In 1869, Pemberton moved to Atlanta,
Georgia, to start a lucrative business.
Here, he invented, and successfully
sold a drink he called French Wine
Coca. Its fame spread throughout the
Southeast, and the demand for the
tasty beverage became high.
Pemberton himself endorsed his wine
as a cure for morphine addiction. In
1885, with talk of Prohibition,
Pemberton developed a drink without
alcohol. Pemberton added the extract
from cola nuts, a strong stimulant
containing caffeine, along with the
coca, and he replaced the wine with
sugar syrup.
On May 18, 1886, Pemberton decided
on a final formula for his new drink,
and Frank Robinson, a part owner of
his company, came up with the name
Coca-Cola and scripted Coca Cola into
the flowing letters which has become
the famous logo and trademark of the
brand today. On June 28, 1887, the
Coca-Cola trademark patent was
granted. Pemberton’s Pharmacy in
Atlanta, Georgia, was the first place to
serve Coca-Cola from a soda fountain.
The cocaine was eventually removed
from the drink in 1905. So when the
new Coca-Cola debuted later that year
– still possessing the valuable tonic
and nerve stimulant properties of the
coca plant and cola nuts, yet
sweetened with sugar instead of wine
– Pemberton advertised it not only as
a delicious, exhilarating, refreshing
and invigoratingsoda-fountain
beverage but also as the ideal
temperance drink. It is said coke was
discovered when De Luise, a 19th
century American soda jerk
accidentally hit the soda water spigot,
adding carbonated water to the syrup
in the glass. The result was a happy
accident: the invention of Coca-Cola.
And the Coca-Cola beverage, whose
unit sales totaled a mere 3,200
servings based on the twenty-five
gallons of syrup sold to drugstores by
Pemberton Chemical Co.), is today
called the world’s most popular soft
drink – accounting for billions of
servings at restaurants all over the
world.
The trademark Pemberton and his
partners created more than one
hundred years ago can claim wider
recognition today than that of any
other brand in the world. Such is the
commercial legacy of a onetime
Confederate lieutenant colonel who
earned his medical degree at the age
of nineteen. Coca Cola was first
imported into the African market
through South Africa in 1928 but a
bottle of what eventually became the
world’s most famously enjoyed
beverage had been sighted a decade
before on the dockside of African
seaport in a sailor’s bag. Bottling
would not start on the continent until
1940 when a bottling plant was
established in South Africa—where it
began its great African adventure. In
1951, A.G Leventis got the franchise to
sell the product in Nigeria. Two years
later, the Nigerian Bottling Company
was incorporated as a subsidiary of
Leventis.
And the first bottling facility was
established in Ebutte Metta and
Apapa, Lagos. The 1960s saw NBC
exceeding the One Million crates per
year mark. NBC commissioned its
second bottling factory in Ibadan in
1961 and rapidly increased their
operation which now boasts about 13
facilities and 64 depots across the
country.
In 2000, NBC became part of the
Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company
S.A (an anchor bottling group with
operations in 28 countries worldwide.
This year, Coca-Cola celebrates its
130th anniversary, and the product
now enjoys a continent –wide
presence along with its 46 bottling
partners, operating in all countries
and territories in Africa. In each
country, the business is a local
enterprise. Over 1.7bn servings of The
Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) products
are consumed worldwide each day in
virtually every country on the planet.
And with Africa accounting for 7% of it,
some 120m Coca-Cola products are
served continent-wide every day and
that number mounts daily in tune with
Africa’s unstoppable economic march.
Around the world, products of the Coca
Cola Company are consumed at the
rate of more than one billion drinks
per day.
In 1894, Coke was sold in bottles for
the first time. During World War II,
bottling plants were set up in Europe,
Africa, and the Pacific islands. Back to
Pemberton. By the late 1890s, Coca-
Cola was one of America’s most
popular fountain drinks. Realizing that
he needed financial backing to market
this non-alcoholic version of French
Wine Coca on a large scale,
Pemberton formed a company for that
purpose.
He put his son Charles in charge of
manufacturing Coca-Cola, and after
prohibition ended in 1887, he again
produced French Wine Coca. He
announced that he would retire from
active practice, sell his drugstores in
Atlanta and elsewhere in the state,
and devote all his time to promoting
his beverages. Meanwhile, a group of
businessmen responded to
Pemberton’s appeal to finance the
new Coca-Cola Company. Asa Candler,
an American business tycoon who had
worked for Pemberton in 1872 came
on the scene and bought the business
From John Pemberton in 1888 and
established the Coca Cola Company.
Controlling shares
Under the new arrangement, received
a royalty of five cents for each gallon
of Coca-Cola sold. With Asa Candler at
the helm, the Coca-Cola Company
increased syrup sales by over 4000%
between 1890 and 1900. Candler later
took over controlling shares of the
company after Pemberton’s death.
Charles Candler, Asa’s son once said
that one of his father’s first missions
was to change the original Pemberton
formula in order to improve the taste
of the product and ensure its
uniformity and stability.
To this end; Candler hired Pemberton’s
former partner, Frank Robinson to
perfect the formula. Reports had it
that Pemberton’s financial troubles,
along with his morphine addiction, led
him to sell, trade, and give away
portions of his company to various
individuals. It was Pemberton’s
practice to organize a business as a co
partnership and then convert it into a
corporation.
On August 16, 1888, he died at his
home in Atlanta of stomach cancer, on
the 6th of August 1888, leaving behind
many unfinished formulas. On the day
of Pemberton’s funeral, Atlanta
druggists closed their stores and
attended the services en masse as a
tribute of respect. On that day, not one
drop of Coca-Cola was dispensed in
the entire city. At sun up the following
day, a special train carried his body to
Columbus, where a large group of
friends, relatives, and admirers laid
him to rest. The Atlanta newspapers
called him the “oldest druggist of
Atlanta and one of her best known
citizens”
BIO BRIEFS
•Born: July 8, 1831, Knoxville, Georgia,
United States.
•Education: University of Georgia.
•Died: August 16, 1888, Atlanta,
Georgia, United States.
•Known for: Coca-Cola.