It has now been 133 years since the beginning of the world’s best and #1 selling soft drink. On March 29, 1886, a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia,  Dr. John S. Pemberton, wanted to produce a delicious soda that could be sold abroad at soda fountains everywhere. After making a flavored syrup and adding carbonated water, he had his friends try it, and they loved it. However, it was his bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, who created the name “Coca-Cola.”

In 1894, Joseph Biedenharn started to use bottling equipment behind his soda fountains, becoming the first to put Coca-Cola in bottles. In 1899, three entrepreneurs, Benjamin Thomas, Joseph Whitehead, and John Lupton, bought the rights to bottle and sell the beverage. They built the worldwide Coca-Cola bottling system that is still used today.

Coca-Cola continued to evolve and increase in popularity, especially when in 1993 the famous Coca-Cola polar bear commercials debuted. Customers loved the commercials due to the polar bears’ typical characteristics of innocence, curiosity, and mischievousness. In fact, each of these animated commercials took approximately 12 weeks to film and edit! And at the World of Coca-Cola, you can get your picture taken with a seven-foot-tall polar bear.

Today, Coca-Cola is sold nearly everywhere. During the very first month of production, sales averaged nine servings per day in Atlanta. Now sales average around 1.9 billion globally per day! Open happiness today!

~Connor Zody