It’s the most popular soft drink in the UK, has one of the most recognisable logos in the world and, is it really Christmas if you haven’t seen the Coca Cola truck on TV?
All of that being said... do you know what the recipe for Coca Cola actually is? Of course it contains some sugars, some caffeine, some natural flavourings, you know, all the good stuff.
The quantities though? The secret sauce?
Well, according to Time magazine, only two people in the world do at any one time.
How Coca Cola started
It all started with a veteran from Georgia. His name was Pemberton and following the Civil War, he had developed a morphine addiction. He hoped to cure this with his drink Pemberton’s French Wine Coca, a brew that included kola nut and coca wine.
However, as prohibition was introduced in Atlanta, he reformulated the drink without alcohol, renamed it Coca-Cola and started selling it in pharmacies in Georgia.
Time said: “Asa Candler, an early president of the Coca-Cola company who bought the formula in 1887, worried rivals would obtain the recipe so insisted no one ever write it down again.
“Staff removed all labels from ingredient containers and identified them by sight and smell only. Candler even went through the company mail so he could shred invoices that employees might attempt to sell to other drink makers.”
Of course, word got out anyway
While it existed in whisper networks and a book containing the recipe was copied and handed around, it never really gained traction. The recipe now exists in quite literally a vault at Coca Cola HQ.
“The company has always said, and as far as I know it’s true, that at any given time only two people know how to mix the 7X flavouring ingredient,” Mark Pendergrast, historian and author of For God, Country and Coke told This American Life.
“Those two people never travel on the same plane in case it crashes; it’s this carefully passed-on secret ritual and the formula is kept in a bank vault.”
WILD.