Made In America - Bill Bryson [134]
The more sinister side of Prohibition also gave new meaning to such words as gangster (originally in the nineteenth century it denoted membership of political gangs, not criminal ones), moll (an old English term for a girl, which was given an unexpected boost as the word for a gangster’s distaff sidekick), and racket, another English word dating back to 1812 in the sense of shady doings, but which had died out there and was resurrected in America in 1927. The growing importance of the car to criminals, as well as to everyone else, is reflected in getaway car and to be taken for a ride.
Brewers didn’t have nearly as easy a time of it as winegrowers. In desperation they turned to producing a product they hopefully called near-beer, and soft drinks with names like Howdy, Chero-Cola and Lithiated Lemon (which would eventually evolve into 7-Up, so called because it came in seven-ounce bottles).
Soft drinks were already an old tradition in America having first appeared as flavoured soda water in Philadelphia in either 1825 or 1838, depending on which source you credit. Throughout the nineteenth century root beer, sarsaparilla, ginger beer, spruce beer and other non-intoxicating beverages became increasingly popular. However, it was not until 1886 that America got its quintessential soft drink when John Styth Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist and patent medicine man whose earlier, less inspired inventions had included Globe of Flower Cough Syrup and French Wine Coca, brewed up a concoction of cola nuts, coca leaves, caffeine and other similarly dubious condiments in an iron tub in his backyard, stirred it with a wooden oar from an old boat and called it Coca-Cola.
His bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, who was a dab hand at calligraphy, drew up the florid italic logo that Coke uses to this day. Pemberton viewed his invention not as the refreshing thirst-quencher that the world has come to love, but as an efficacious tonic for hangovers and other ills of the upper body.31 (It was also discreetly hinted that it was a potent aphrodisiac.) Pemberton, alas, failed to see Coca-Cola’s true potential. In 1887, he sold a two-thirds interest in the company for the curiously precise but decidedly short-sighted sum of $283.29. It took another Atlanta pharmacist, Asa G. Candler, to capitalize on Coca-Cola’s true possibilities as a money-making refreshment. Just before the turn of the century he bought the formula from its new owners for $2,000 and with canny marketing converted his investment into a fortune. By 1919, when the company was sold again, this time to a consortium of Atlanta businessmen, Candler’s $2,000 outlay had grown in value to $25 million.
Such success naturally encouraged imitation and soon American purchasers could try competing brands like Co Kola, Coke-Ola, Coke, Koke, Klu-Ko Kola, Afri-Cola, Okla-Cola, Carbo-Cola, Sola Cola, Pepsi-Cola and even Celery-Cola. Many copied not only Coca-Cola’s famous name and italic logo, but also its distinctive bottle. Coke took them all to court. By 1926 it had resorted to law no fewer than seven thousand times to protect its trademark, including one fight that went to the Supreme Court. Not only did it destroy almost all its challengers, but in 1930 it won the exclusive right to its alternative name, Coke, making it the world’s only successful product with two names.32
The one competitor it notably failed to quash was Pepsi-Cola, invented in 1898 by Caleb D. Bradham and so called because it was intended to combat dyspepsia. Despite going bankrupt twice in its formative years, PepsiCo is now actually a larger company than Coca-Cola thanks to its diversifications – it owns, among much else, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is why you needn’t bother asking for Coke there – and by having the good sense not to tamper with its formula as Coke did, with disastrous results, in 1985, when it introduced New Coke. (Marketing disasters are something of a tradition at Coke. It once launched Coca-Cola flavoured cigars, with results not unlike those