One of the few rumors about Coca-Cola that is actually true, is that it did at one time, contain cocaine. Granted, trace amounts of the stuff, but it was there all the same.
What people tend to forget, is that Coca-Cola was originally marketed as a patent medicine by its creator, John Pemberton, himself a druggist. And as it would turn out, a druggist with an addiction, but not to cocaine.
Pemberton's original creation was a cocawine, highly popular in 1884 Columbus, Georgia. But when prohibition was passed the following year, he re-worked the formula into a non-alcoholic drink that used coca leaves and kola nuts for flavoring. And Coca-Cola was born in 1886. His first sales were through a pharmacy where it was sold as a fountain drink at five cents a glass, touted for its abilities to cure everything from dyspepsia to morphine addiction, from which Pemberton himself suffered. At that time, the formula is reputed to have been five ounces of coca liquid in every gallon, but that has never been confirmed, since the formula was so jealously guarded.
In 1887, Pemberton sold rights to the formula, to Asa Candler, who then incorporated a company as Coca-Cola. But Pemberton then sold the rights a second time, while his son Charlie started to produce a similar drink. Pemberton declared that Charlie had the right to the name, but Candler and the unfortunate second purchasers, could use the formula. But the name had been established, and Candler's versions "Yum Yum" and "Koke" flopped. He then made a legal push to reclaim his rights to the name and the formula, all the while with an eye on the developing public awareness that consumption of cocaine was bad for you.
Candler was afraid to totally remove the coca from his formula, because he believed the only way he could hang onto the patent for the name, was to keep producing it with the ingredients that had given the drink life as Coca-Cola.
In 1902, the actual amount of coca extract in the syrup, had been reduced to 1/400th of a grain. It would not be eliminated entirely, until 1929.
