0:00 The man who invented Coca-Cola, John Pemberton, wasn't trying to create the world's most popular soda.0:07 He was a pharmacist trying to cure his own morphine addiction.0:12 Yeah, it’s a pretty dark start for such a happy brand.0:16 Last week we dug into the ruthless origins of Facebook, but this story, Admin, this one begins with a Civil War veteran and a saber wound from the Battle of Columbus in 1865.0:29 Okay, so walk me through that.0:31 How do you get from a battlefield injury to… Coca-Cola?0:35 Well, Pemberton was a respected chemist, but the morphine he was prescribed for his wound led to a serious addiction.0:44 So, like a lot of pharmacists at the time, he started experimenting with tonics.0:50 His first big hit was something called "Pemberton's French Wine Coca." Which I'm guessing had coca leaves in it.0:58 Oh, absolutely.0:59 And wine.1:00 But then in 1886, Atlanta passed prohibition laws, so he had to rework the formula to be non-alcoholic.1:08 He swapped the wine for a sugary syrup, mixed it with carbonated water at a local pharmacy, and that was it.1:16 That was the birth of Coca-Cola on May 8, 1886.1:19 And the name?1:20 That came from his bookkeeper, a guy named Frank Robinson.1:25 He thought the two Cs in Coca-Cola would look good in advertising, and he’s the one who hand-penned that famous Spencerian script logo we still see today.1:36 So Pemberton creates this thing...1:39 he must have become unbelievably rich.1:42 That's the most tragic part of the story.1:45 He never saw the success.1:47 He was sick, still struggling with his addiction, and desperate for cash.1:52 In its first year, they were selling, like, nine drinks a day.1:57 Nine?1:57 That's it?1:58 That's it.1:59 So he started selling off pieces of his company to anyone who would buy.2:04 And just before he died in 1888, he sold his remaining stake for about twenty-three hundred dollars.2:11 Wait—two thousand three hundred dollars?2:14 For the rights to COCA-COLA?2:17 Mm-hm.2:17 To a man named Asa Griggs Candler.2:20 And Candler was the complete opposite of Pemberton.2:23 He was a brilliant, aggressive businessman.2:27 He saw the potential, hunted down all the other partial owners, consolidated control, and by 1892, he owned the whole thing.2:36 So Candler is the real architect of the empire.2:39 One hundred percent.2:41 Pemberton was the inventor, but Candler was the founder of the company as we know it.2:47 But Candler also made one of the biggest business blunders in corporate history.2:53 Oh, this gets even better.2:55 What did he do?2:56 He sold the exclusive, nationwide bottling rights for Coca-Cola...3:01 for one dollar.3:02 You're kidding me.3:04 ONE dollar?3:05 Why on earth would he do that?3:07 The thinking at the time was that Coke was a soda fountain drink.3:12 He didn't see the future in bottles.3:14 So he offloaded the rights, thinking it was a quick way to expand the brand's reach without spending any money.3:23 But it meant for decades, The Coca-Cola Company itself made almost nothing from the millions, then billions, of bottles being sold.3:32 Wow.3:33 So the whole origin story is just...3:35 completely different from the official version.3:39 You have an inventor battling addiction, a formula that originally contained cocaine—which wasn't fully removed until 1905, by the way—and a founder who got rich after buying the idea for pennies.3:54 Exactly.3:54 The corporate story is about a moment of refreshing innovation.3:59 The real story is about desperation, shrewd business deals, and, um, a lot of luck.4:05 Pemberton died just two years after inventing it, hailed in the Atlanta papers as one of the city's "best known citizens," but completely broke.4:16 He never knew what he'd created.4:18 It’s wild.4:19 The brand is built on this image of pure, simple happiness.4:23 But the foundation is...4:25 gritty and complicated and honestly, just really human.4:29 It is.4:30 It’s a story of a man's personal tragedy becoming the world's biggest commercial success, but only after he was long gone.4:39 It really makes you wonder what the real story is behind any iconic brand.
