Pemberton French Wine Coca

Not only did the Pope endorse it, he awarded Vin Mariani a gold medal Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, a Georgian pharmacist named John Styth Pemberton created his own version of Mariani s concoction, called French Wine Cola . Prohibition came to Atlanta in 1886, so Pemberton created a new nonalcoholic version of the drink which he called Coca-Cola. In 1903, the cocaine extract was removed from the recipe, being replaced by sugar and caffeine to supply the stimulant, although the name Coca-Cola remained unchanged. 

Coca leaves were brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadores, and cocaine was isolated from the leaves in the 1860s. In 1863, the French chemist Angelo Mariani created the tonic Vin Mariani , an extract of coca in Bordeaux wine. The non-alcoholic version Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 by the American Pharmacist John Pemberton, who mixed extracts of coca leaves and caffeine-containing cola nuts with soda. With the introduction of the first anti-drug laws in the USA in 1906, however, only decocainized leaves were used for the production of Coca-Cola. 

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