Ben Gilbert

If you're drinking that much of that formula, you're having the equivalent of 16 Cokes worth of caffeine.

It's an absolute crap ton of caffeine and sugar.

By that description, the cocaine probably would affect you less than the sugar and caffeine in the mix.

And this amount of cocaine really was only a part of the formula for those early first few years.

Which is funny because it neither contains much cola, since the caffeine is actually an extract, and it's just a tiny little drop from the cola seed.

And very soon, they would strip out almost all the cocaine.

And so you have a product that for the next 140 years would be called Coca-Cola that contains really not very much coca and really not very much cola.

And I'm pretty sure what actually happens is Pemberton lets his formula settle.

And it's kind of this thick syrupy thing, brings it down the street to the first drugstore.

And that druggist, that proprietor is the one who actually combines that syrup with the carbonated water.

and makes the choice, which I think could have gone either way, is it a still or a sparkling beverage, to give it that champagne sparkle to create the Coca-Cola that would endure from there.

That wouldn't be very good.

No, well, it wouldn't be as successful.

I mean, there was probably hundreds of things like Coke that were still that did not succeed.

This is unbelievable.

I read that this guy was Pemberton's bookkeeper, and yet he's the one who came up with the name Coca-Cola and the Spencerian script, the logo Coca-Cola, which has been unchanged other than just tightening it up a little bit since he created it in 1887.

It's like, I'm your bookkeeper type thing.

And this is the very first manufacturer's coupon redeemable at a retailer.

Well, yeah, it's a high gross margin product where you can give out giant amounts where if you mail someone a little ticket that says you can come and redeem a free drink that tastes good that's full of sugar, caffeine, and cocaine, I'm pretty sure they're going to buy more from you.

It's a high gross margin product, so you have lots of dollars to play with.