The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [8]
Like Pemberton, Candler knew the real money was to be found in selling patent medicines. Rather than tinker with his own formulas, however, he bought those made by others, including Botanic Blood Balm and the unfortunately named Everlasting Cologne. It was Frank Robinson who convinced Candler to buy Coke just a few years after Pemberton invented it. Ill and in need of cash, Pemberton had sold two-thirds of the company out from under his partners in 1887, leaving Robinson—the adman who named Coke—with nothing. Livid at seeing his hard work taken away from him, Robinson cajoled Candler with visions of Coke’s national potential—and with its efficacy at treating headaches, which Candler had suffered from all of his life. Swayed by the hard sell, Candler quietly began buying up outstanding shares by any means possible. On two occasions, according to Coke historian Mark Pendergrast, documents seem to include forged signatures, including Pemberton’s own signature on a bill of sale signed with his son (who died soon after, under mysterious circumstances). Perhaps to cover his tracks from those early misdeeds, Candler later had all of the earliest records of the company burned.
At any rate, once he had the company under his control, Candler wasted no time spreading the drink around the country. His business model was simplicity itself—the company mixed sugar and water to create the syrup, added the flavoring, and sold jugs of the stuff to drugstores to peddle in their soda fountains for a nickel a drink. At those prices, however, the company wasn’t going to make money unless it sold a lot of drinks. That is where Frank Robinson comes in, since it was Candler’s quiet sidekick who directed the early strategy for selling the product.
Put in charge of sales and marketing, Robinson in large part literally gave the drink away, handing out tickets for free Cokes all over Atlanta and mailing them to Atlanta’s most prominent citizens. Later he expanded the practice into a Victorian precursor to the now ubiquitous “reward cards” at stores promising discounts in exchange for customers’ personal information. Each soda fountain operator got free syrup for 256 glasses of Coca-Cola, provided it gave the company names and addresses for 128 of its best customers, who then received free drink tickets. Soon the company was sending out coupons for more than 100,000 drinks a year. The buzz was well worth the cost. Sales took off as soon as Candler took over, multiplying nearly ten times between 1889 and 1891, from around 2,000 to nearly 20,000 gallons a year. Within another two years, sales had more than doubled again to nearly 50,000 gallons.
No doubt, those sales had something to do with the kick early imbibers got from the drink, from its namesake ingredient—cocaine. The World of Coca-Cola never mentions the word, of course, and the company goes out of its way to deny it whenever the issue crops up. Present Coke archivist Phil Mooney states flatly in a posting on Coke’s corporate website: “Coca-Cola has never used cocaine as an ingredient.”
At best, that claim is a technicality, since early formulas for Coke called for coca leaf, not cocaine, though it amounts to the same thing. Apparently no records survive showing how much Pemberton put in the drink, though one early copy of the formula held by a descendant of Frank Robinson calls for a relatively small one-twentieth of a grain per dose. When Candler took over the company, he reduced the amount of cocaine and caffeine over the span of several years in response to growing public controversy. Even so, an analysis by the president of the Georgia Pharmaceutical Association in 1891 found what amounted to one-thirtieth of a dose per glass, shrugging that off as “so small that it would be simply impossible for anyone to form the cocaine habit from drinking Coca-Cola.”
Candler picked up on that diagnosis, including it in a 1901 pamphlet. That didn’t stop him, however, from simultaneously touting the narcotic kick