Coca Cola NARRATOR: In 1886, a pharmacist called John Pemberton made a sugary brown syrup which he mixed with fizzy water to be sold as a medicine and brain tonic. He called it Coca-Cola. COCA-COLA ARCHIVIST: Unfortunately, he dies just a year and a half after he invented the product. ^M00:00:18 NARRATOR: But businessman Asa Candler had big dreams for Pemberton's creation. He bought the rights for around $2,000 and formed the Coca-Cola Company. Candler turned out to be a marketing visionary and had the drink distributed to soda fountains in drugstores across America. Getting Coke's name everywhere seems to have been with them right from the start. COCA-COLA ARCHIVIST: He creates serving trays, he creates posters, he creates calendars, pens and pencils and wallets and, if you're a lady, a pocket mirror to adjust your make-up. Anything he could think of that would put the name out in front of the consumer. ^M00:00:53 NARRATOR: I've always thought that all this marketing is a modern curse. But these guys were at it 120 years ago. COCA-COLA ARCHIVIST: It was actually estimated that approximately 10% of all Americans in the 1890s received a free glass of Coca-Cola. INTERVIEWER: Wow. Ahead of the time. >> Way ahead. NARRATOR: Sales really took off when three entrepreneurs had a brilliant idea - putting Coca-Cola into bottles. In just ten years, 400 independent bottling plants sprang up, squirting the fizzy stuff into bottles from sea to shining sea. Coke sold them the secret syrup and they did the rest. This is how the Coca-Cola Company still operates today. COCA-COLA ARCHIVIST: Robert Woodruff, who was head of the company at that time, made a pledge that he would get Coke to American troops for a nickel, regardless of what it cost the company. ^M00:01:46 MAN: This was him being patriotic. Actually, this is a brilliant piece of marketing because it meant that Coca-Cola became a vital supply for the Army. So they weren't subject to sugar rationing, so they could maintain their production. That was pretty cool. And it meant that the soldiers, you know, regarded drinking Coca-Cola as a link back home and they wrote letters saying things like drinking Coca Cola reminds us of what we're fighting for and all this kind of stuff. So it was massively successful marketing. ^M00:02:10 [ Music ] ^M00:02:13 COCA-COLA ARCHIVIST: In the course of World War II, we actually sent 64 portable bottling plants to follow U.S. troops. So these went throughout Western Europe, they went into the South Pacific, they went into North Africa. They even went into parts of South America. MAN: And it meant that when the American Army then withdrew from all these countries that it had fought in, the Coca-Cola distribution system was left behind, and it was then on every continent except Antarctica. ^M00:02:40 [ Music ] ^M00:02:43 NARRATOR: Coke's global domination seems to be a combination of getting the logo everywhere, getting the drink within an arm's reach, and getting you to like it when you're young. ^M00:02:54 NARRATOR: Oh, and perhaps its winning personality.