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Secret Formula: The Inside Story of How Coca-Cola Became the Best-Known Brand in the World

2015

Synopsis

Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen’s engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the original Coca-Cola formula and then struggled to get the cocaine out of the recipe. After many tweaks, he finally succeeded in turning a backroom belly-wash into a thriving enterprise.

In 1919, an aggressive banker named Ernest Woodruff leveraged a high-risk buyout of the Candlers and installed his son at the helm of the company. Robert Woodruff spent the next six decades guiding Coca-Cola with a single-minded determination that turned the soft drink into a part of the landscape and social fabric of America. Written with unprecedented access to Coca-Cola’s archives, as well as the inner circle and private papers of Woodruff, Allen’s captivating business biography stands as the definitive account of what it took to build America’s most iconic company and one of the world’s greatest business success stories.

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The Cola Wars: The Story of the Global Battle Between the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, Inc.

The Cola Wars: The Story of the Global Battle Between the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, Inc. by J.C. Louis and Harvey Z. Yazijian, published in 1980, offers a detailed historical account of the fierce rivalry between two of the world’s most iconic soft drink companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. The bo...

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