Original Recipe

Ira Glass (0:01)

Hey there, everybody. So I'm not going to beat around the bush. For this week's radio program, we think we may have found the original recipe for Coca-Cola. And I am not kidding. I am not kidding. One of the most famously guarded trade secrets on the planet. I have it right here, and I am going to read it to you, I'm going to read it to the world, and I'm going to make my case for why I think it's real despite whatever Coca-Cola might say. And that is just one of the two stories on today's program. Today's show is something we first broadcast 15 years ago, and when we did, it made international headlines. I am not kidding about that. It broke news. But that is so long ago. I bet you've never heard this one, right? WBEZ Chicago, This American Life, Ira Glass. Probably the best story about how protective Coca-Cola is of its secret formula comes in this book that was written by Charles Howard Candler. His dad, Asa, did not invent Coca-Cola, but founded the Coca-Cola Company back in 1892 And Charles, the son, wrote this, One of the proudest moments of my life came when my father initiated me into the mysteries of the secret flavoring formula, inducting me into the Holy of Holies. Charles then says, Incredibly, there was no written formula, and the labels had been removed from all the containers of the ingredients. So they were, quote, identified only by sight, smell, and remembering where each was put on the shelf. And I thereupon experienced the thrill of making up with his guidance, a batch of Merchandise 7X.

Merchandise 7X. Merchandise 7X is the cartoonishly super secret cloak and dagger name they give the flavoring mixture in Coca-Cola.

Charles' dad, Asa, was so paranoid about anybody else getting hold of the secret formula for 7X that even though he was president of Coca-Cola, he's president of the company, he would go through the company mail himself and remove the invoices for any ingredients that had been purchased so that nobody in the accounting department could read what ingredients had been bought for the product.

I learned all this from A History of Coca-Cola, a book written by investigative journalist and historian Mark Pendergrast.

Mark Pendergrast (2:06)

The company has always said, and as far as I know, it's true, that only two people at any given time know how to actually mix the 7X flavoring ingredient and that these people never travel on the same airplane in case it crashes, it's this carefully passed on secret ritual and that the formula is kept in a bank vault at Sun Trust, which used to be the Georgia Trust Company.

Ira Glass (2:33)

Of course, this makes no sense at all. Why can't the two guys fly on a plane if the formula is sitting inside a bank vault?

Coke's official line on this these days is that they simply do not talk about how many people know the recipe. Though the reason that most of us think of it as one of the biggest trade secrets in the world, is probably because that's the story Coca-Cola likes to tell.

John Reznikoff (2:54)

Coke's secret formula. Only two guys in the world know it.

SPEAKER_4 (2:57)

If something happened to one, the formula would be lost forever. And then, cookouts would be catastrophic.

Ira Glass (3:05)

In this particular Coke commercial, I guess the premise is that each of the two guys only knows half the formula. It's just one of several commercials that have come out recently that poke fun at the myth of the super secret formula while at the same time bolstering and selling that myth.

Coke even has this thrill ride at its museum in Atlanta, the world of Coca-Cola. We follow two characters who are trying to unlock the secret formula for Coca-Cola. And so, with all this money, all this energy, all these millions of dollars spent over the years to convince us of just how impossibly, importantly, iconically secret the formula to Coca-Cola is, it was a surprise when we stumbled across an article in Coke's hometown paper, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February 18th, 1979 Not on the front page, but buried, buried back on page 2B, one of their columnists, Charles Salter, without any fanfare at all, published what looks like the original recipe for Coca-Cola.

He found it in a pharmacist's old book of recipes. All the recipes, including the one for Coca-Cola, are written by hand. Most of them are for various ointments and remedies. And if that seems like a strange and random place to find this kind of thing, Coca-Cola was invented by a pharmacist, and it was originally sold at pharmacy soda fountains. The article says that the book passed from one pharmacist to another until it fell into the hands of one, Everett Beale, who owned a drug store in Griffin, Georgia, 40 miles from Atlanta. He's mainly identified in the story as a fishing buddy of the columnist.