It was the first formula for Coca-Cola that gave it its name. Made with coca leaves and cola nuts, the drink was first presented as a medicine. The legend leaves up to chance the meeting of a sparkling water, a caffeinated syrup, citrus juice, and an extract from the coca plant. It is said that it was even a blunder – by accident, pharmacist John Pemberton created what he then called French Wine Coca, an alcoholic beverage. This was in the year 1885, the same year that Prohibition was voted into effect in Atlanta, the future headquarters of the Coca-Cola Company. In those days, the challenge for the brand new company was to come up with a nonalcoholic beverage. It still had to capture the effects of bourbon all while breaking with other thirst-quenchers already in existence. This is how by conserving its primary active ingredient – coca – Coca-Cola was billed as a “stimulant of the nervous system and a tonic.” Two years later, Pemberton teamed up with Frank Robinson. He was an ambitious and audacious accountant, put in charge of finding a name and a visual identity. It would be Coca-Cola, and the signature color would be red. This is where the brand started to really form. In the following decades, the beverage would pervade into the heart of the American population while keeping an air of mystery around its formula. Each ingredient is identified by a number that is only known by certain higher-ups, like the famous secret ingredient “7x”.
But the Coca-Cola legend is first and foremost one of advertising and packaging. It took until 1960 for the drink to be sold in its famous glass bottle. Until then, its fans had to fill up their cups at soda fountains, or enjoy it in a mini-sized 19.2 cl bottle or a 1L bottle with a screw cap. Later on would come the plastic bottle, then finally the can, imagined in 1977 for the French market. Throughout these transformations, the tonic definitely didn’t fail to leave its mark on culture all while overturning traditions. By quickly partnering with the cinema universe, Coca-Cola invaded the screen; they practically invented product placement. The company also used images of stars to tell their story with a face. The first amongst them was actress and singer Hilda Clark who, in 1901, agreed to pose for the brand. Other silver screen stars from silent films would follow, like Pearl White and Marion Davies. Coca-Cola’s ads did more than inspire you to drink some: they changed belief systems. When a 1931 ad featured a jolly, chubby Santa Claus with a long white beard and a red and white outfit, an entire aspect of the collective Catholic imagination disappeared. Drawn by Haddon Sundblom, the poster opened the way for other Coke characters: the elf, the pin-up, and the polar bear in 1993.
More recently, Coca-Cola has called out to personalities in the music industry and the fashion world. Sonia Rykiel, Kenzo, Manolo Blahnik, more recently Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and Marc Jacobs. They have all rethought Coke’s bottles or cans. And today, Coca-Cola is even inspiring friendship…
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