It’s the classic fizzy drink enjoyed by millions – probably billions – the world over.
But people are still only just realising why Coca Cola is called Coca Cola, despite the brand being well over 100 years old – and how the popular drink’s name traces its name back to an illicit substance.
Coca Cola, which recently recalled products sold in the UK after a risk was identified with one of the ingredients, used to contain a far riskier ingredient which lent the iconic pop its instantly recognisable nomenclature.
Posting to Reddit, one poster in the Is This B**** subreddit asked: “The Coca in Coca-Cola stands for Cocaine. I’ve heard this, along with claims that early Coke bottles had cocaine in them. How true is this?”
And u/usernamenotfound replied: “The drink undeniably had some cocaine in it in early days, and its not b*******, the coca stands for coca leaf which is the source of alkaloid, cocaine”
Another added: “Not b*******, Coca Cola used to have cocaine in it, which comes from the coca plant so, coca, cola.
“It wasn’t anything like the way it is now, though. Back then, cocaine was looked at as medicine. It was thought that cocaine was good for you and that it treated illness, depression and fatigue (which it sort of does treat fatigue…) so cocaine had a purpose to people back then.
“Matter of fact, if you look online you can find all sorts of history with cocaine’s use in medicine. They used to give it to children and adults at the dentist’s office, before it was replaced with Novocaine. At one point, there were these cocaine covered candies to chew on when you had a toothache. They also used it as an anesthetic for eye surgery.”
Coca Cola was first marketed as a health drink of sorts, and its name refers to its two main extracts: coca leaves and kola nuts. Coca leaves are taken from the same plant used to make cocaine, while kola nuts give it the distinctive flavour and also contain natural caffeine.
Although the exact Coca Cola recipe used today is a closely guarded secret, Coca-Cola still includes a leaf extract taken from the coca plant.
As reported by the Washington Times in 2004: “Pitching the pick-me-up possibilities of coca leaves is nothing new. In 1886, an Atlanta pharmacist invented Coca-Cola as a brain-stimulating tonic that combined cocaine and an extract from the caffeine-producing kola nut.
“Coke dropped cocaine from its recipe around 1900, but the secret formula still calls for a cocaine-free coca extract produced at a Stepan Co. factory in Maywood, New Jersey.
“Stepan buys about 100 metric tons of dried Peruvian coca leaves each year, said Marco Castillo, spokesman for Peru’s state-owned National Coca Co.”
The company which imports coca leaves into the US, the Maywood Chemical Works, is the only plant in the United States which is authorised by the Drug Enforcement Administration to import coca leaves.
The cocaine-free extract is sold to the Coca Cola Company for use in soft drinks, and the cocaine is sold to a pharmaceutical firm, including for topical painkillers.
As an aside, Coke also has another legal exception – it is the only brand allowed to have two trademarks for the same product. Both Coca Cola and Coke are registered trademarks for the same Coca Cola drink, whereas no other product has two names trademarked on a single product.
