Ben Gilbert

For days, with his father standing watch over his shoulder, Howard practiced making the ultra-secret flavoring compound, merchandise number 7X—

learning to recognize the pungent fruit and vegetable oils by sight, smell, and remembering each was put on the shelf when it came in from the supplier, until he knew by heart the proper amounts and the exact order in which to mix them.

This is crazy.

The way in which this giant mass-produced thing is created, it's like only stored, I believe, in two people's head at any given time.

And they deliberately kept this a trade secret and didn't patent it because if you patent something, eventually it does become the property of the public and anyone can use it to further innovate.

But Coca-Cola has kept this secret all these years.

Yeah.

Really?

The Coca-Cola company would maintain that is absolutely not true.

Which I think they also maintain is not the right formula.

I mean, I would swear up and down, too.

But yes, this is like the best example ever, though, of someone electing to use a trade secret instead of a patent and then creating all this lore and secrecy and myth around it.

But for six years, as collateral, the first written version of the formula was in the Guarantee Bank of New York vault.

Robert Woodruff's Coca-Cola

And David, do you know what Standard Oil of New Jersey is today?

Uh, SO, right?

Exxon.

Yeah, you drink it in the hot southern summers of Georgia.

Oh, yes.

This is the sort of opposite of the intrinsic advertising that we were talking about earlier.