Mike and I spent a fun day at the World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, Georgia, the city where the company is head-quartered and where there is now an interactive museum with lots of free tastings of the suite of Coke products.

After Dr. John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola in 1886, the formula was kept a close secret, only shared with a small group and not written down. In 1891, Asa Candler became the sole proprietor of Coca-Cola after purchasing the rights to the business.

In 1919, Ernest Woodruff and a group of investors purchased the company from Candler and his family. To finance the purchase Woodruff arranged a loan and as collateral he had Candler’s son commit the formula to paper. The piece of paper containing the formula was placed in a vault in the Guaranty Bank in New York until the loan was repaid in 1925. At this point, Woodruff reclaimed the secret formula and returned it to Atlanta and placed it in the Trust Company Bank, now SunTrust, where it remained until it was moved to the Coca-Cola museum in 2011.

Today, the Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company with more than 500 sparkling and still brands. It is estimated that consumers in over 200 countries enjoy the company’s drinks at a rate of 1.7 billion servings a day!

The blogger meeting the Coca-Cola Polar Bear!

The polar bear first debuted in a print advertisement in France in 1922 and then appeared periodically for the next 70 years. The modern-day polar bear made its debut in 1993 and has since appeared in numerous television and print advertisements.