March 12- Coke is Bottled for the First Time

This Day in History: 12 March 2020

 

12 March 1894

 

126 years ago, today, Coca-Cola was first sold in glass bottles. At the start of its existence, the drink was only available as a fountain drink, and its producer saw no reason for this to change. Coke was originally created as a non-addictive substitute for morphine, invented by John Pemberton, who was a druggist in Columbus, Georgia, in 1886. It became rapidly popular, but the rights transferred to Asa Griggs Candler, whose nephew had advised him that selling the drinks in bottles could increase sales. However, Candler apparently was not interested. Joseph A. Biedenharn, the owner of a candy store in Vicksburg, Mississippi, put the drink into Hutchinson bottles. This was a common and reusable glass bottle, that had no resemblance to the modern Coke bottle.

 

A few years later, Candler sold the bottling rights to Coke for a dollar to two brothers from Chattanooga but did not allow it to be bottled in Vicksburg. He was still convinced that the bottle would not be a major source of money, and reportedly never even collected the dollar. In 1915, the bottlers put out a call for a new, distinctive design, so one could recognise it if it were in pieces on the ground, or by feeling it in the dark. The winning design was produced by the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, giving the world its iconic bottle that we know today.

 

Want to find out more about the history of Coke contour bottles? Click here for more information.