Coca Cola Diffusion

Austin T. Koeckeritz Coca Cola Diffusion of Popular Culture Memo

Coca Cola was first introduced on May 8, 1886 when a Atlanta pharmacist (John Pemberton) brewed the first batch of Coca-Cola at Jacob`s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia for five cents a glass at soda fountains, selling an average of nine glasses per day. Soda fountains were popular in the U.S at the time due to the belief that it could cure certain sicknesses including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence. A majority of the population believed this while a handful of people believed otherwise. Shortly after, Coca Cola became a competitor in the patent medicine market.

In 1892 a second company was incorporated, The Coca Cola Company, the marketing of the drink began, bottling technology innovations developed, such as the Crown Seal, and on March 12, 1894 Coca Cola was sold in bottles for the first time which then took the country by storm. The first outdoor wall advertisement was painted in the same year as well but in Cartersville, Georgia. At the turn of the century, Bottling was a risky affair, with foot-powered machines, unsanitary conditions, and unreliable seals which temporarily slowed the movement of spreading but it made Coca Cola able to be distributed throughout the world. The first bottling of Coca-Cola actually occurred in Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the Biedenharn Candy Company in 1891 but it the sealing technique wasn’t very effective until the 1894 Crown Seal fixed the problem. Also, the first Coca-Cola recipe was invented in Columbus, Georgia at a drugstore by John Pemberton in 1885 but wasn’t sold publicly until 1886. By the time of its 50th anniversary, the drink had reached the status of a national icon for the USA.

With the aid of transportation networks, Coca Cola began to diffuse across the United States and to foreign countries. Transportation was a large part of the Coca-Cola diffusion. As transportation technology improved, Coca-Cola extended its domain further into the world. It started with mule-drawn wagons that distributed bottled Coke. Railroad stops were already a major transportation hub. Coca-Cola hired railway employees as commissioned salesmen to sell cases of coke. One especially interesting part of the Coca-Cola transportation system was the Josephine, a New Orleans bottler’s motor boat that delivered Coke to the Bayous. With the invention of the truck, Coca-Cola was able to spread out into more outlets, such as fruit stands, bowling alleys, and cigar stores. By 1906, Cuba and Panama became the first countries to bottle Coke outside the United States, making this a contiguous movement. Coca-Cola became a worldwide brand name, selling its beverages in almost 200 foreign nations by the start of World War II. Coca-Cola sent 248 employees overseas as “Technical Observers”

to bottle Coke behind the front lines. Technical observers set up 64 bottling plants on every continent except Antarctica (making this a relocation diffusion) but often facing considerable challenges that prevented the diffusion of the drink. These challenges included things like polluted water, supply shortages, disease, labour shortages, and antiquated machinery. In some plants, German and Japanese POWs were put to work bottling Coke. Bottling allowed Coca-Cola to sell to new markets by enabling the public to buy cases of Coke at grocery stores and service stations. This also enabled African Americans, who had been prohibited from the white-only soda parlours, to enjoy coke. In 1910 all the earlier records were burned, by 1920, the U.S census reported that there were over 5,000 bottlers, and in 1955 coke began being distributed in cans which was Joseph A. Biedenharn`s proprietor.

In Coke’s earlier years, the soft drink contained large amounts of cocaine and caffeine. The government began to notice this and Coca Cola was forced to change their recipe. The cocaine made the drink very addictive which was part of the reason the drink was such a big hit. The company started advertising the soft drink in ads, in national magazines, national radio, television broadcasts, celebrity endorsements, and coupons for free samples of soda. The free samples of soda was very sneaky because once you have that sip of the soda you become hitched to it because of the addictive substance found in the ingredients. All together the final outcome of Coca Cola is that it has now spread all across the globe and is very popular and only took around 80-110 years to make it available in every country! Good Job John Pemberton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_cola http://projects.olin.edu/ahs/HOT2004/PolarBears/content.htm http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/coca_cola.htm