John Pemberton's Coca-Cola: A Saber Wound, a Coca Tonic and a $300 Name

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John Stith Pemberton, a Confederate colonel with a medical degree, took a saber wound to the chest at the Battle of Columbus in April 1865 and came home addicted to morphine. Working from his Eagle Drug and Chemical House in Columbus, Georgia, he set out to formulate a substitute. In 1885 he registered Pemberton's French Wine Coca, modeled on the French coca wine Vin Mariani but with the caffeine-rich kola nut added. When Atlanta and Fulton County passed prohibition in 1886, he removed the wine, masked the bitterness with heavy sugar, and renamed the syrup Coca-Cola, selling it as a temperance drink. It launched at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta on May 8, 1886, mixed with carbonated water for five cents a glass.

Pemberton claimed the drink treated morphine addiction, indigestion, headaches and impotence, and a glass is estimated to have held about nine milligrams of cocaine. By 1888, ill with stomach cancer and still addicted, he sold pieces of the business to raise cash, leaving three companies selling Coca-Cola and the name assigned to his son Charlie. Asa Griggs Candler bought up formula rights, and after Pemberton died on August 16, 1888 he reportedly offered the widow $300 for the name at the funeral. Candler claimed full ownership by 1889 for about $2,300, incorporated in 1892 and had early records destroyed in 1910.

• The 1886 local prohibition vote is the reason the formula became a sweet, non-alcoholic syrup.
• Candler bought one third of the formula rights for $50 down and $500 in 30 days.
• Charlie Pemberton, an alcoholic and opium addict, was found unconscious in 1894 and died 10 days later at 40.
• Former co-owner Margaret Dozier said in 1914 that her signature on the bill of sale was forged.
• Historical analysis of the transfer papers indicates John Pemberton's signature was likely forged as well.