Flavoring
Oil Orange 80
Oil Lemon 120
Oil Nutmeg 40
Oil Cinnamon 40
Oil Coriander 20
Oil Neroli 40
Alcohol 1 Qt.
let stand 24 hours.
The “flavoring” section is obviously the “7X” portion of the formula, though there are only six ingredients (unless you count the alcohol, which serves as a mixer and does not go into the final product in any meaningful quantity). Perhaps he later added the vanilla to the flavoring section as the seventh component. “F. E. Coco” means fluid extract of coca, but kola nuts are not mentioned, only “Citrate Caffein.” Pemberton almost certainly received his caffeine from Merck in Darmstadt, Germany, because he praised that firm as producing a superior form of the stimulant from kola nuts.
I photocopied the document, but I simply couldn’t believe that anyone in the Company would hand over the original formula to me. Surely, it must only be a forerunner of the real thing. Then I received an unexpected confirmation that I had stumbled onto something far more valuable than I knew. While interviewing Mladin Zarubica, the technical observer who made “white Coke” for Russian General Zhukov, I mentioned that I had a formula. “Oh, really?” he said. “So do I. The Company gave me one when I had to take the color out for Zhukov. Want to see it?” I did indeed. When the photocopy of his January 4, 1947, correspondence arrived, it contained exactly the same formula that I had found in the archives—same amounts, same format, even the same misspelling of “F. E. Coco.” The only difference was that Zarubica’s formula was incomplete, leaving off the final two ingredients in 7X (coriander and neroli). It appeared that Company officials hadn’t wanted to release the complete formula and had taken the precaution of altering it in this fashion.
I was astounded. Not only had I come into possession of Pemberton’s original formula, right in the Company archives, but also it had ostensibly survived unchanged for at least sixty years after the inventor wrote it out on that acidified paper. This was truly a mystery, however. It contradicted Howard Candler’s assertion that his father, Asa, had substantially altered the way Coca-Cola was made. And why didn’t the Zarubica formula mention decocainized coca leaf, or the fact that the Company no longer used citric acid, but phosphoric? Or that the amount of caffeine had been reduced? And that wasn’t the only formula change. Old Asa supposedly fiddled around with 7X as well. Through the years, the amount and type of sweetener have also varied.
It appears that even when the original ingredients and proportions are revealed, the mystique around the formula continues. My final conclusion: the Company did not, in fact, give Mladin Zarubica the current working formula for Coca-Cola in 1947—not even a partial version of it. Instead, Zarubica received a truncated version of the original formula, enough for his chemist to figure out how to turn brown Coke to white. The mystery of why the Company handed the formula to me in its own archives remains. I can only assume that there had been another clearly labeled Coca-Cola recipe in the Turner book, which had been hidden away, but no one had examined the rest of the formula closely, and the “X” variety had slipped through.
* * *
Beginning with Asa Candler, no one at the Company referred to the ingredients by name. Instead, sugar was Merchandise #1; caramel, Merchandise #2; caffeine, Merchandise #3; phosphoric acid, Merchandise #4; coca leaf and kola nut extract, Merchandise #5; 7X flavoring mixture, Merchandise #7; vanilla, Merchandise #8. This nomenclature stuck, although since the Candler era, numbers 6 and 9—perhaps lime juice and glycerin—fell by the wayside, probably subsumed into 7X or some other ingredient.
I cover the effects of the coca leaf and kola nut at length in the body of this book, but the herbal lore surrounding the other ingredients is fascinating, if inconclusive, given the minuscule amounts of each ingredient and the questionable veracity of ancient sources. Cassia, for instance, has been used as a cure for arthritis, cancer, chills, diabetes, dizziness, goiter, headache, and stomachache. Nutmeg fought infection during the Black Death of the fourteenth century, has served as a psychotropic and narcotic, and is prescribed in India for dysentery, flatulence, malaria, leprosy, rheumatism, sciatica, and stomachache. Vanilla is variously an aphrodisiac, a stimulant, or an antispasmodic; cures hysteria; inhibits cavities; and reduces flatulence. And so it goes for the other ingredients.
Since astonishing amounts of money have flowed from the secret formula, it didn’t surprise me when no one at the Company wanted to talk about the drink’s ingredients. Finally, I was allowed to interview Harry Waldrop, a “senior psychometrician” (no kidding, that was his title) who once had served as one of the elite corps of taste-testers who sample batches of Coca-Cola Classic.
The panel members know 7X by smell as much as by taste, and they can discern the minute differences that aging causes. Just as some wine tasters can roll a 1945 Mouton-Rothschild around their palates and differentiate it from a 1946, Waldrop could spot a two-month-old batch of Coke syrup. “We all know the taste and aroma of the right stuff,” Waldrop said, “but it’s hard to put it into words. It’s when it’s off that we attempt a description.” The panel members might break up into small groups, for instance, to discuss a slight bitter note they don’t like. Although all of the ingredients were carefully measured and tested by gas chromatography and other scientific gauges, Waldrop didn’t think a computer could replace human beings. “An electronic nose couldn’t pick up the subtleties, the hedonics,” he assured me.
Although scientists can probably detect the different ingredients in Coca-Cola, even estimating the approximate amounts, they cannot, according to Company officials, duplicate the precise mixture. Incredible as it may seem, only two people active with the Company supposedly know how to mix 7X. That would necessitate their flying frequently to several concentrate factories around the world, which supply the building blocks for the world’s Coke. No one, of course, would talk about such logistics.
* * *
After I published this “X” formula in previous editions of this book, I got a call in 2005 from Laura Robinson Vanwagner, whose great-grandfather, Frank Robinson, was the “unsung hero” who had named Coca-Cola, written out the famous Spencerian script, and brewed and advertised the drink. To my amazement, Laura handed me a color photocopy from her great-grandfather’s formula book, written neatly on narrow yellow paper with red lines. There were recipes for French Wine Coca, Gingerine, Indian Queen Hair Dye, and Coca-Cola.
I knew about these recipes. Laura’s older brother Frank Robinson II had played cat and mouse with me back in 1991 when I was conducting research for the first edition, giving me glimpses of the recipes but never letting me have them. Then, when Frank was getting divorced in 1996, his wife sued him for the formula, which made splashy headlines in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. Frank held on to the papers and gave them to his sister when he was dying of prostate cancer five years later. She had given them to The Coca-Cola Company archives, she said, but she decided I should have color photocopies as well. Here is the Robinson Coca-Cola formula, also reproduced as a facsimile here, along with its predecessor, French Wine Coca.
CC FOR 36 GALS
216 # [pounds] Sugar
18 gals water
29 oz lime juice
29 " citric acid
18 " caffein
29 " flavoring
3 quts [quarts] coloring
15 " f. e. [fluid extract] coca
COCA-COLA FLAVOR
1 ½ Qut [quart] alcohol
12 oz f. e. [fluid extract] nutmegs
19 " ext vanilla
13 d [illegible—“drops?”] oil lemon
10 d oil cinnamon
12 d " nutmeg
15 d " coriander
12 d " neroli
This early Coca-Cola formula from Frank Robinson is confusing. Why does it include nutmeg twice, as a fluid extract and an essential oil? Like the “X” version, it includes vanilla, lime juice, coca leaf
extract, caffeine, sugar, caramel coloring, and essential oils of lemon, cinnamon, coriander, and neroli, but it leaves out oil of orange.
These are facsimiles of Frank Robinson’s formulae for making French Wine Coca and Coca-Cola, which Robinson’s great-granddaughter gave to Mark Pendergrast, as described in the text. (Courtesy Laura Robinson Vanwagner)
* * *
To confuse matters even more, This American Life, a popular public radio program, featured yet another early Coca-Cola formula on a show aired on February 11, 2011. Ira Glass, the host, interviewed me for the show, asking me to comment on a formula he had found published in a 1979 column by Charles Salter in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In the old leather-bound recipe book of druggist R. R. Evans, a contemporary and friend of John Pemberton’s, Salter had found a formula for “Coco Cola Improved”:
F E Coca 3 drams USP
Cit acid: 3 oz
Cit Caff: 1 oz
Sugar: 30# [pounds]
Aqua: 2.5 Gals
Lime juice: 2 Pints
Vanilla: 1 oz
FLAVOR 2 OZ TO 5 GALS SYRUP
Alcohol: 8 oz
Oil Orange: 20 drops
" Lemon: 30 drops
" Nutmeg: 10 drops
" Coriander: 5 drops
" Neroli: 10 drops
" Cinnamon: 10 drops
Use 1 ½ oz Caramel or more to color
On the show, I told Ira Glass that the Salter formula was quite similar to the “X” version I had found in the Coke archives and that I thought it was probably a version of the original formula. Glass had his formula made (presumably without the cocaine) but pronounced it “really mediciny . . . like orange-flavored baby aspirin,” not that close to the Coca-Cola he knew. On the theory that modern flavors were purer and stronger, the men at Sovereign Flavors cut the flavoring by a quarter and produced something much closer to Coca-Cola. This seemed like fudging. Yet even Coke archivist Phil Mooney admitted that the Salter version might be a “precursor” of the original formula. I subsequently discovered that the Sovereign Flavors folks had used drams instead of drops of the essential oils, which accounts for the overly strong result.
Even though I had published the “X” formula in 1993 in the first edition of this book, and the Salter formula had been in print since 1979, the radio show created a sensation, going viral internationally. The response was so overwhelming that it crashed the powerful website of This American Life for several days, and I was subsequently interviewed by the New York Times and international media.
Perhaps the impact of the radio show reminded Coke executives of the powerful pull the Coke secret formula exerted. A few months later, just before Christmas 2011, the Company moved the formula from the SunTrust Bank to a vault inside a new exhibit at the World of Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, where I took a tour a few days later. It’s a brilliant marketing ploy. You are led into a dark round room where esoteric mathematical formulae swirl on the floor while eerie music tinkles. It’s a kind of Coke Holy of Holies room. “At the heart of Coca-Cola there is a secret, protected for well over a century, known only to a few,” a dramatic disembodied male voice says. “Now, you are here. The secret is near. Go ahead, drink it in.” On the surrounding walls, you see Coca-Cola being poured over ice so that you feel you’re inside a giant glass. This gives way to a kaleidoscopic swirl of old Coke ads. Finally, a wall panel rolls open to reveal a dimly lit vault, with mysterious smoke swirling. “The secret formula for Coca-Cola is here,” the voice says. “So share a Coke. Be part of the magic. We’ll keep the secret. Because keeping the secret ensures that the magic lives on.” If you can’t make it to Atlanta, you can view a digital video I took on YouTube—just search “Coca-Cola vault Mark Pendergrast.”
* * *
Despite all the mystique and paranoia built around the famous formula, one day a Company spokesman let down his guard when I asked what would happen if I published the bona fide formula with explicit directions in this book. He grinned. “Mark,” he said, “let’s say this is your lucky day. I happen to have a copy of that formula right here in my desk.” He opened his drawer and handed me a phantom document. “There you go. Now what are you going to do with it?”
“Well, I’d put it in my book.”
“And?”
“Somebody might decide to go into business in competition with The Coca-Cola Company.”
“And what are they going to call their product?”
“Well, they couldn’t call it Coca-Cola, because you’d sue them. Let’s say they call it Yum-Yum, and they strongly imply, without being liable for a lawsuit, that Yum-Yum is actually the original Coca-Cola formula.”
“Fine. Now what? What are they going to charge for it? How are they going to distribute it? How are they going to advertise it? See what I’m driving at? We’ve spent over a hundred years and untold amounts of money building the equity of that brand name. Without our economies of scale and our incredible marketing system, whoever tried to duplicate our product would get nowhere, and they’d have to charge too much. Why would anyone go out of their way to buy Yum-Yum, which is really just like Coca-Cola but costs more, when they can buy the Real Thing anywhere in the world?”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
APPENDIX 2: COCA-COLA MAGIC: THIRTY-FIVE BUSINESS LESSONS
As I researched The Coca-Cola Company’s long history, I was struck by the remarkably consistent vision that has permeated it since Coca-Cola was first invented by that gentle morphine-addicted genius, John Pemberton. He considered his drink an elixir of life, a nerve tonic to cure the ills of man. After Pemberton’s death in 1888, Asa Candler carried on that tradition of fanatical belief in the product, as did Robert W. Woodruff, the Boss, and aristocratic Roberto Goizueta. Current CEO Muhtar Kent has shown himself to be of the same missionary stripe.
What, then, can readers glean from my lengthy romp through Coke history, aside from the original formula in the previous appendix? Are there messages for the modern entrepreneur? I have distilled the convoluted history’s essential parables into thirty-five commandments. Most are simple and seemingly obvious dicta, such as those dispensed by the Boss, but Coke illustrates them dramatically. They are, unfortunately, not quite so simple to put into practice. Other points were learned less willingly in agonized accidents such as the New Coke debacle. Here, then, are time-tested management lessons from the image masters at Coke:
1.Sell a good product. And if it contains a small dose of an addictive drug or two, all the better. The product doesn’t have to talk or fly, but it does have to perform some useful, universally appreciated function. Coca-Cola tastes pretty good once you get used to it; it tickles the nostrils, quenches thirst, produces a little caffeine lift. Some people think (following inventor John Pemberton) that it cures headaches, hangovers, and stomachaches. Alas, it no longer contains a smidgeon of cocaine, but it’s still a good product. In its early days, Coca-Cola was bottled under less-than-ideal conditions, resulting in a variable product spiced upon occasion with blowflies, worms, or shards of glass. Now, however, it is standardized and sanitary, providing a safe drink in parts of the world where sampling the water can be fatal.
2.Believe in your product. And I don’t just mean an intellectual exercise here. Make your product an icon and your job a religious vocation. Instill in employees the notion that this is the finest product on earth and that they are working for the best company around. Your salespeople should be missionaries, not mere paid hacks. In the golden years of the Company, new employees reputedly received a transfusion of Coca-Cola syrup rather than blood.
3.Develop a mystique. An air of mystery, with a touch of sin, sells. As a company official admitted to me, the secret formula really doesn’t make much difference. The real formula for success is in the product’s “brand equity,” developed over the last century and a quarter. So what if somebody took the formula from this book and made a fake Coke? The formula’s mystique has always been an important part of its appeal. Wh
o knows what’s really in that dark, fizzy potion?
4.Sell a cheaply produced item. Coca-Cola has always cost only a fraction of a cent per drink to produce, the sweetener (cane sugar in most places outside the United States, high-fructose corn syrup domestically) constituting most of the expense. Like most patent medicines of its time (1886), Coca-Cola wasn’t a capital-intensive product; its manufacture, while highly secretive, was neither difficult nor laborious.
5.Ensure that everyone who touches your product before it reaches the consumer makes substantial amounts of money. This rule follows naturally. If your product is cheaply produced, it allows for a substantial mark-up at the retail end. Coca-Cola achieved a kind of Midas quality. For many years, everyone who touched it became wealthy, including bottlers, stockholders, wholesaling jobbers, and those who provided the trucks, bottles, pallets, dispensers, and so on. Of course, such success fostered gratitude and devotion.
6.Make your product affordable to everyone. For an unprecedented time, from 1886 until the 1950s, Coca-Cola sold for a nickel a drink, and it remains relatively inexpensive around the world so that a citizen in a developing country can purchase the beverage without going broke. Consequently, as an “affordable luxury,” Coke has usually survived and even thrived during hard economic times.
7.Make your product widely available. Robert Woodruff always strove to place his drink “within arm’s reach of desire,” a lovely phrase that translated into an obsession to provide outlets virtually everywhere. As old-time Coke evangelist Harrison Jones put it in 1923, “Let’s make it impossible ever to escape Coca-Cola.”
8.Market your product wisely. That sounds simple, but how, when, and where you market and advertise your product will ultimately determine its success. By 1911, Asa Candler was spending over $1 million a year in creating public demand for his drink, making Coca-Cola the best-advertised single product in the world. Two years later, the Company issued over one hundred million novelty items with the logo prominently displayed, all on items that required repeated visual use—thermometers, calendars, matchbooks, blotters, baseball cards, Japanese fans, and signs. It is no surprise that a Coke salesman of that early period reported that one new consumer, “hounded almost to a state of imbecility with Coca-Cola signs,” suffered recurring nightmares in which big white devils with red mantels chased him, screeching “Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola!” It would be even less of a surprise today.
For God, Country, and Coca-Cola Page 82
