Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 by John Pemberton, a 50 -year- old chemist from Atlanta, USA. He decided to develop a soft drink to sell as a ’brain tonic’. Working tirelessly in the back room of his drugstore, he produced a (1) .............. containing, among other things, coca leaves, cola nut oil, sugar and caffeine. (The exact (2)………. is still a secret, but the tiny cocaine content was removed in 1903.) A few months later, an assistant served a customer Coca-Cola mixed with soda water by (3)………… It was this small addition that (4)………. out to be the vital ingredient that made the drink a success.
Coke has always been cleverly marketed. The distinctive (5)…..…. of the bottle was introduced in 1915 to prevent imitations and a 1920s advertising campaign even gave the world Father Christmas as we now know him with a red and white (6) ………….rather than the blue, yellow or green he had often previously worn. Coca- Cola was a major sponsor of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, as well as being the Games’’Official Drink’.
The red and white Coca-Cola logo can be recognised at once a powerful symbol of the American way of life. Coke was the most (7) .................. distributed mass-produced item in America when World War II broke (8)………. and the war provided the (9)………… to spread the product into Europe and Asia. When conservative Europeans (10)………….. about the invasion of modern American values into their ancient cultures, the act of drinking Coke became for the young a minor form of rebellion against tradition. Even today, Coke is still closely linked with the image of youth.