John Pemberton was a Confederate Colonel who was wounded in the American Civil War and became addicted to morphine. Later, he set out to find a substitute for the opiate.
The prototype for Coca-Cola was invented at Pemberton’s Eagle Drug and Chemical house in Columbus, Georgia but was actually a coca wine. Pemberton might have been inspired by Vin Mariani, a European coca wine.
In 1885, when Pemberton registered his French Wine Coca nerve tonic, but Atlanta and Fulton County passed their prohibition laws, he brought out Coca-Cola as a non-alcoholic version of his wine.
The first sales of Coca-Cola were at the Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia in 1886.
It was originally sold as a medicine for 5 cents per glass at soda fountains.
Back then, soda fountains were extremely popular because of the belief that carbonated water was good for people’s health.
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Pemberton even went on to lie about how Coca-Cola cured many diseases including dyspepsia, headache, impotence, morphine addiction and neurasthenia.
Pemberton ran the very first advertisement for Coca-Cola in the Atlanta Journal/
There were three different versions of Coca-Cola on the market by 1888, manufactured by three different companies.
On January 14th, 1888, a partnership was formed between Pemberton and four businessmen named A.O. Murphey, E.H. Bloodworth, J.C. Bayfield and C.O. Mullahy.
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There were no signed documents to back up the claims made by Asa Candler years when he had later claimed to posses a stake in Pemberton’s company as early in 1887.
Pemberton declared that the name of “Coca-Cola” was owned by his son Charley, but the other two manufacturers are permitted to continue to use the formula.
Charley’s control over the “Coca-Cola” name was the main factor for him to participate as a major shareholder in the Coca-Cola Company incorporation filing in March, 1888.
Charley’s exclusive ownership over the name was always a thorn in the side of Candler. Candler’s oldest son, Charles Howard Candler, later wrote a book that was published by the Emory University, in 1950.
In the biography about his father, Candler states that “on April 14th,1888vthe young druggist [Asa Griggs Candler] purchased a one-third interest in the formula of an entirely unknown proprietary elixir known as Coca-Cola.”