A Pharmacist Sells the First Coca-Cola in Atlanta

On May 8, 1886, a wounded American Civil War veteran and pharmacist named John Stith Pemberton began selling a new medicinal syrup at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. Prepared as a fountain beverage mixed with carbonated water, the concoction cost five cents a glass. Drugstore fountains were popular across the United States at the time because carbonated water was widely perceived to offer health advantages. Pemberton promoted his non-alcoholic formulation as a temperance drink, taking advantage of recent local prohibition ordinances enacted across Atlanta and Fulton County.

Pemberton originally developed the recipe as an alternative to his earlier nerve tonic, French Wine Coca, which had contained alcohol. Seeking a substitute after dealing with an addiction to morphine, he combined coca leaves with caffeine-rich African kola nuts, giving rise to the name Coca-Cola. In early promotions, Pemberton presented the tonic as a patent medicine capable of relieving a wide variety of afflictions, ranging from indigestion and nerve disorders to headaches and morphine dependence. The first newspaper advertisement for the drink ran in the Atlanta Journal on May 29, 1886.