Coca-Cola is not just a soft drink, it has become a worldwide phenomenon now. Anywhere you go around the globe, red cans of coca-cola own the racks of supermarkets. Today is Coca-Cola Day, celebrated on the occasion of the birth anniversary of John Stith Pemberton, the man who blessed us with coca-cola in the late 19th century.
While coca-cola may just be a simple soft drink, there are some very unexpected facts associated with it. Here are a few lesser known and fun facts about coca-cola that you probably didn’t know:
Santa Claus and Coca-Cola
The classic red outfit of Santa Claus is very characteristic. However, did you know that Santa owes this look to coca-cola? The company started its Christmas advertising during the 1920s. They used pictures of Santa Claus in his conventional look but that didn’t work.
After that, Archie Lee, the then promotion chief for Coca‑Cola commissioned Haddon Sundblom, an artist to paint a picture of Santa which was both wholesome and realistic. Sundblom read "A Visit From St. Nicholas", a poem by Clement Moore, and used his own Scandinavian legacy to create the big, red, happy vision of Santa that the company used for over 30 years.
The company then commissioned Sundblom to paint Santa for the last time in 1964 and by then the coca-cola version of Santa Claus became popular worldwide.
Coca-Cola’s name was derived from 2 key ingredients
As catchy as the name coca-cola is, it was actually derived from two ingredients: the coca leaf and the kola nut. The kola nut provided caffeine and the coca leaves were cocaine!
Coca-Cola has more than 3,500 beverages
Coca-Cola today has a very wide range of drinks. It has more than 3,500 beverages and about 500 brands across the world. There are flavours that you might not have heard about like vanilla, cherry and orange. If you try one coca-cola beverage every day, it will take you 9 years to try every drink.
You can drink Space in space!
If you decide to go out of this world, literally, you can still enjoy coca-cola as it launched ‘Coca-Cola Space’, a soft drink that can be consumed in space. They made the coca-cola space can in 1985 and tested it successfully aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger the same year.
Coca-Cola in India during the ’70s
The brand entered the Indian markets in 1950. However, in 1977, they withdrew operations from the country in protest of regulations and legislation by the Government of India restricting the weakening of multinational companies. On October 24, 1993, they reemerged in the market, and have kept a solid presence from that point forward.
