This is part two of a 3 part series into the early history of Coca-Cola and the soda pop industry. In the first part of this series, I talked about the fact that Coca-Cola not only contained cocaine but that it was indeed invented as a way to deliver cocaine to customers in a palatable, and even delicious, drink. The early history of soft-drinks is part of the history of the patent medicine industry since most early soft drinks, or sodas, were sold as health tonics and made claims of being cure-alls. But of these, Coca-Cola was the most successful, especially after Asa G. Candler bought rights to the drink in 1891. After this, many imitators followed, mostly in Atlanta but some in neighboring areas.
That drugs were such an important part of early soft drinks seems shocking, I know. But you have to understand that prior to the 20th century, there were hardly any consumer protection laws in the United States.
Both cocaine and morphine were available without a prescription and scores of “patent medicines” contained many ingredients that would make you snort your Coca-Cola right out your nose if you read about them. Cocaine was one of the popular hidden ingredients of the time.
There is no doubt that if you consumed one of these miracle healing tonics containing cocaine, you’d get quite a lift and so could not be blamed for thinking it was one hell of a medicine.
Today, it’s odd to see someone smoking a cigarette, let alone imagine them freely drinking some cocaine containing beverage. Well, imagine, if you will, the Cocarette, a cigarette made with cocaine and tobacco leaves, sold by the Cocabacco company of St. Louis.
The advertising urged smokers to use cocorettes by claiming that coca is “the finest nerve tonic and exhilarator ever discovered. It stimulates the brain to great activity and gives tone and vigor to the entire system.” The ads weren’t exactly lying. I’ll just bet they did make you scurry through your brain like roaches startled by a light.
The company also claimed that coca reversed the depressing effects of nicotine. That’s a good side benefit. They also were “non-injurious” and could be “freely used by persons in delicate health without injury, and with positively beneficial results.”
Hopefully, you now have an idea of how things were. Cocaine addiction was common in the U.S. between 1894 and 1899, and again between 1921 and 1929, mostly owed to these products.
Europe also saw its own wave of addictions. Ironically, the history of cocaine use in the United States is so tied up with prohibition! After all, Coca-Cola was a “temperance drink.”
The Many Early Coca-Cola Imitators
With the success of Coca-Cola came a score of soft drink makers jumping on the coca leaf bandwagon. There were at least three more out of Atlanta and other places like Athens, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; New Orleans, Cincinnati; Canton and Chicago. Too bad Pemberton had already used the best name. These others had to be content with names like:
- Cafe-Coca
- Kos-Kola
- Kola-Ade
- Celery-Cola
- Wiseola
- Rococola
- Vani-Kola
- Koca-Nola
Believe it or not, there was even one called Koke! Have a Koke and a smile! As well as such blatant rip-offs as Coke Ola and Coca-Kola. Just imagine that.
A full 153 cases of trademark infringement against Coca-Cola were squashed in court in 1916. Estimates of the number of trademark immitators go as high as 7,000!
One case, against the Koke Company of America, went all the way to the Supreme Court. There was another called Afri-Kola. It’s easy to guess the reason for that name. In the image of the Afri-Kola label below, notice it has a diamond shape. This was an imitation of the diamond-shaped Coca-Cola label, which was appearing on bottled Coca-Cola products at that time.
This was not the same drink that sells today out of Germany, called Afri-Cola, with a C. I will not get into the undertones of racism that coincided with cocaine use in the South. After all, this is a lighthearted little site.
But it seems clear that part of the reason we have drug control today has to do with the racist fear of Southern blacks crazed by cocaine use. If you’d like to read more about this, I’d recommend the book by Mark Pendergrast, For For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It.
One thing that Pendergrast mentions, which will blow your socks off, is that cocaine was a cheaper high than alcohol and 50 cents could buy a week’s supply.
Most of these Coca-Cola imitators didn’t make any specific therapeutic claims. They were simply refreshing, invigorating, healthful, exhilarating, and, of course, delicious.
This all became a big problem. Cocaine could crop up anywhere. In a cola or in a patent tonic medicine. There was no need to list it on any ingredient label. It could be hidden.
It was cocaine, then, that prompted the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. However, it was not illegal yet!
The use of cocaine in products was still permitted but it had to be identified on the label of the product. Still, this was enough to prompt many manufacturers to remove the cocaine from their products. Eventually, in 1914, cocaine became classified as a “narcotic” by the Harrison Narcotics Act.
Once the you know what hit the fan and the harmful and addictive affects of cocaine were in the national agenda, Candler, the owner of Coca-Cola, was in a pickle. Even before that the product had been attacked by a local minister but he had righteously denied it had any harmful affects.
He did not want to mess with the formula. The cola was pretty much a craze by this time and if cocaine were taken out, where would that kick come from? And it was half the name, after all, and part of the patent.
The company had a number of legal battles over the years but of significance was the government’s trying to impose a stamp tax on Coca-Cola as a medicine, in 1898. The company sued to get the taxes back in 1901.
During the IRS trial, Candler had to admit that the product “contained a small amount of” cocaine. The company did get it’s tax money back but this, and growing tensions surrounding the product prompted Candler to “de-cocainize” the product.
The idea was to deliver some coca leaf to the product without it actually containing cocaine, which was partially accomplished in 1902, but some cocaine was still found by a chemist, about four-hundredths of a grain. Then Candler contracted with Schaeffer Alkaloidal Works to “de-cocainize” the Secret Formula’s “Merchandise No. 5.”
Ironically, this change brought about another lawsuit in 1909 by the US Department of Agriculture, which charged that Coca-Cola was “misbranded” since its name promised coca and kola and it had little of either of these things.
Furthermore, it was adulterated with caffeine. See, back then, it had a lot more caffeine since a lot of caffeine was needed to get the kick that the original cocaine had given. The company agreed to remove almost two-thirds of the caffeine.
Forget the Cocaine, Match the Bottle!
When Coca-Cola was first at the soda fountain in 1886, like I mentioned above, it was 5 cents a glass. It wasn’t until about eight years later that it began to be bottled on a small scale.
But that iconic Coke bottle with its diamond shaped label that so many of us remember so fondly from our youth didn’t come about until 21 years later. Before that the bottles were plain and undistinguished.
Well, coming up with a unique and innovative bottle wasn’t just a way to be fancy. Those early plain and straight-sided bottles were easy for competitors to copy. Coca-Cola imitators could try to imitate the bottle and the diamond label and fool consumers into purchasing their product, or just imitate the name, such as Coca-Colla. There were hundreds of these, including:
- Koke
- Cola-Coke
- Coke-Ola
- Co-Cola
- Ameri-cola
- True-Cola
- Uneeda-Cola
- Mo-Cola
- Kola-Kola
And in those days, there was no standard bottle at all. In fact, the product could be put in any bottles and there is a dizzying array of early coca-cola bottles still to be found with collectors and antique dealers.
The diamond-shaped label was an early way to discourage imitation since Candler’s name in capital letters had to be printed along one side.
Different bottlers could use slightly different bottles. So it was the label that needed to be imitated. If they got it close enough, a loyal Coca-Cola drinker might accidentally pick up an imitation Coke.
After all, in those days, you usually reached down into a cooler full of sodas. Likewise, if you were new to sodas and you grabbed some Coke imitator you may never know the difference and go on drinking the wrong brand!
There were many legal battles over this unfair competition but the solution, in the end, was to design and patent a standard Coca-Cola bottle, making it illegal for competitors to imitate it.
Even so, the company sometimes went a bit far in its anti-competition battles, going after companies using “cola” in their name, including, of course, Pepsi Cola, but this was not considered derivative enough and the case was lost.
Other cases, however, like that against the brand “Koke” were won. That was a battle that dragged on for years until the US Supreme Court decided that Koke was a fraud and could no longer be sold.
Since early Coca-Cola was clearly highly addictive, it is easy to assume that Coca-Cola owed all its success to cocaine, whether from the cocaine content or the later caffeine content.
However, Coke’s success went right on happening, and imitators kept coming, all through the changes made early on in the formula, which included removing the cocaine and then highly reducing the caffeine content.
But surely the stimulatory effects could not have hurt. Coca-Cola didn’t invent the idea of putting a drug in a soda, though! The early history of drugs in soft drinks is the subject of part three of this series.