Coca-Cola Bottled: A Global Brand Is Born

Joseph Biedenharn, a candy store owner in Vicksburg, Mississippi, bottled Coca-Cola for the first time in 1894, filling Hutchinson glass bottles with the syrup-and-soda-water mixture and shipping cases downriver by steamboat to test whether the drink could sell outside a soda fountain. The experiment worked. Biedenharn sent a case to Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters, but Asa Candler, the company's president, showed little interest in the bottling idea, believing the soda fountain was the drink's natural home. The real bottling revolution came in 1899 when Candler sold exclusive bottling rights for most of the country to two Chattanooga lawyers for one dollar. They subfranchised to hundreds of independent bottlers, creating the network that distributed Coca-Cola to every corner of America. Biedenharn's original bottling operation in Vicksburg is now a museum. The decision to bottle rather than just dispense turned a regional fountain drink into the world's most recognized brand, eventually reaching over 200 countries.