I choose this theme becouse I`m a "cocaholic" and Coca Cola is my favourite beverage, I don't drink any other soda then Coca Cola. So when I got the chance to write about whatever I waned to, I grabba the chance to learn something more about the one product I am living for.

The Coca Cola Company is the ones we can thanks for drinking liter after liter of soda every day. It is a beverage company and the world leader in soft drink sales. Coca Cola produces and distributes several brands in the United States and internationally. The company also produces and markets many fruit juices and other nonsoda beverages. The Coca Cola Company is based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Coca Cola's soft drinks include its flagship product Coca Cola (popularly known as Coke), Diet Coke, Tab, Sprite, Fanta, Urge, Bon aqua, cherry coke, Aquarius and Barq's root beer. The company's nonsoda beverages include Minute Maid fruit juices, PowerAde sports drinks, Aquarius Kuli and Nestea iced tea drinks.

Early History

Coca Cola traces its origins to 1886 when John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist who developed patent medicines, created a drink from carbonated water, cane sugar syrup, caffeine, and extracts of kola nuts and coca leaves. Pemberton found the drink both medicinal and refreshing, and he sought to market it. His bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, suggested the name Coca Cola after the two extracts in the ingredients and also wrote the product's name in distinctive script. Coca Cola has used that same logo ever since. Pemberton and Robinson also coined the drink's first vslogan, "Delicious and Refreshing."

Pemberton, however, was ill, and he would not live to see his product's success. In their first year selling Coke, he and his partners made only $50. Pemberton sold two-thirds of his business in 1888 to cover his losses and keep the business afloat. He died later that year and Asa Candler, an Atlanta wholesale druggist, purchased total interest in Coca Cola for $2300 in 1891. The next year Candler and his brother John, Frank Robinson and two associates formed the CocaCola co.

Wartime Developments

During World War II (1939-1945), Woodruff also boosted Coke's popular image in the United States by pledging that his company would provide Coke to every U.S. soldier. The company did not limit itself, however, to only doing business that would increase its success in America. In the period leading up to the war, between 1930 and 1936, it had set up a division of the company in Germany, and it continued that venture during the war. It recreated its image as a German company and allowed the Germans to produce all but two, secret, Coca Cola ingredients in their own factories. In 1941 the German company's president, Max Keith, developed Fanta orange soda using orange flavoring and all the German-made Coke ingredients. The Coca Cola Company's wartime efforts helped it expand its global market, often with the economic support of the U.S. government. By the end of the war in 1945, it had established 64 overseas bottling plants. That same year the company registered a patent on Coca Cola's popular nickname, Coke.

Recent Developments

In 1986 The Coca Cola Company consolidated all of its nonfranchised U.S. bottling operations as Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. The new company began acquiring independent bottling companies, a venture that grew into the world's largest bottler of soft drinks by 1988. While Coca Cola Enterprises distributes over half of all Coca Cola products in the United States, small franchise businesses continue to bottle, can, and distribute the company's drinks worldwide.

In 1987 the Coca Cola Company was listed in the prestigious Dow Jones Industrial Averages (see Dow Jones Averages) index of stock market performance (for the second time, it had also been listed briefly in the 1930s). Its stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Coca Cola and PepsiCo products occupied nine of the top ten spots in the U.S. soft drink market in the mid-1990s. Worldwide, Coca Cola ranked first in soft drink sales, and the company earned almost 80 percent of its profits from international sales.