August 18, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Coca-Cola’s beginnings weren’t glamorous. It started with a wounded Confederate veteran, a sugary syrup marketed as medicine, and a bold idea that caught on in the American South. Larry Jorgensen, author of The Coca-Cola Trail, shares how the drink moved from soda fountains to glass bottles, how small-town bottlers turned it into a national brand, and why a green-tinted bottle became part of its identity.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love hearing your stories. Send them to our
American Stories dot Com. Up next, a story about a
drink that we all know but might not know the
backstory of. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Coca Cola is arguably the South's most successful export. They
sell around three billion cases of product around the world annually,
but they started out small. Here's Larry Jorgensen, author of
the Coca Cola Trail, with more on that.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Well, Coca coola actually started out as these syrop that
is now the main ingredient in co cola. And the
syrup was invented by John Pemberton who was a pharmacist
in Columbus, Georgia, and had started working on the formula
and then his time of working on the formula was
(01:15):
interrupted by the Civil War and he actually fought in
the Civil War. When he got out of the war,
he had a war injury. You know, stories get twisted
through the years. I heard it was a saber type
injury to his stomach, but whatever, it was definitely from
the war and he was looking to.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Get some relief, relief in the form of a morphine
free painkiller, as he was addicted to the substance at
the time.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
He had studied and he had learned that the cola
nut would create a pretty good flavor and the coca
leaf was known for giving some relief to pain. So
he developed his formula with those two items of mind,
the coca leaf and the colon nut. Now, the coca leaf,
(02:06):
as it was used in producing the coca cola syrup
was not processed and I get this all the time.
It was not processed in a way that would produce cocaine.
There was no cocaine in coca cola. There was the
coca leaf, which I guess if you broke it down
far enough, you'd find common natural ingredients to cocaine.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Such as econaine, a relative or rather a precursor of cocaine.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
But it was not cocaine. It was simply the processed
coca leaf that eliminated the pain to some degree and
helped create the flavor along with the colon nut of
what became coca cola. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where
(02:58):
he perfected his recipe and actually it was on March
twenty ninth, in his backyard in a big three legged kettle,
that he made the first batch of coca cola syrup.
And it was, as they say, for medicinal purposes. He
took it to the local drug store and they served
(03:18):
and you come in, you have a pain, a headache
or whatever. They'd put a little coca cola syrup in
a glass and put in some carbonated water. It worked.
But not only did it work, it tasted good. People
started requesting the drink as something that they enjoyed, not
to necessarily solve a headache or something. So it really
(03:41):
took off from there. But the irony of the thing
is that the man who invented it only owned coca
cola syrup for about three years. He sold the rights
and the formula, et cetera to Asa Candler. Well Ace's
thing in life was he wanted to sell syrup, and
(04:02):
that's all that he wanted to do, and he would
sell it to other drug stores and so forth, and
it was for that purpose. Of that purpose only, he
thought that bottling coca cola was and I will quote
a dumb idea. Well, what happened there was a gentleman
(04:23):
in Vicksburg who owned a candy business and a solo
phontain and very ambitious man by the name of Beidenharn.
And mister Bidenharn was obviously selling the Coca Cola syrup
in his drug store. Well, he also would do things
like he would cater parties in that It so happened
(04:45):
that on one July fourth he was to cater a party,
a picnic, a big July fourth picnic, and to bring
beverages and everything. And what he would do then is
there was a small bottler in Vicksburg who bottled, you know,
lemon and sasparilla and orange and all those things. So
(05:09):
he would go to that bottler and buy at wholesale
some of these bottles of soda that he would take
along to the event he was catering. Well, it so
happened on this July fourth there was such a demand
for product that his order was not available, but yet
he had the customer. So mister Bidenarn went to the
(05:32):
picnic and made lemonade for everybody. And after that picnic
he said, this will never happen again, And he went
to Saint Louis and he bought some second hand bodleling equipment.
Now we're talking about bodiling equipment. That is, you know,
one bottle at a time and you push a foot lever,
(05:52):
you know, to make it happen. And he brought that
back to Vicksburg and started bodling coca cola. He thought,
you know, people really like this drink. I'm going to
bottlet and people in the country, you know, I can
take it to them. They don't have to come to
town to get a coca cola. So he set off
(06:13):
to bottle. The story is the first two cases of
coca cola that he bottled, he sent them to Atlanta
to mister Candler to let him know what he was doing.
And of course Candler was more interested in selling old
Joe Bidenarn some syrup. And Candler you know, wrote back, Tom,
(06:36):
yeah it's okay, but you know it wasn't impressed. And
Joe Bidenarn said, you know, he never sent my bottles back.
So that was the big thing.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
And you're listening to the story of coca cola the
South's most successful export. It had been right up until
the eighteen sixties, seventies and eighties cotton, and thank goodness
that changed for both the health and for coke lovers
across the globe, including myself, a certified coke addict, if
ever there was one. When we come back more of
(07:09):
this remarkable story, Coca Cola is rise here on our
American stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell
(07:32):
about this great country, and especially the stories of America's
rich past, know that all of our stories about American history,
from war to innovation, culture and faith, are brought to
us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place
where students study all the things that are beautiful in
life and all the things that are good in life.
And if you can't cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come
(07:52):
to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go
to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we returned
to our American stories and the story of how Coca
(08:13):
Cola got into a bottle. When we last left off,
a man in Vicksburg, Mississippi, named Joe Bidenhearn had decided to,
much to the sugarn of Coca Cola Corporate in Atlanta,
use their syrup to bottle Coca cola himself. Let's continue
with the story, so.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
For five years, Joe Bidenharn is bottling coca cola. Now,
the only other place that was bottling coca cola about
two years after Bidenhard started in Vicksburg, there was a
bottler in Valbasta, Georgia. So within five years of coca
(08:56):
cola being invented, there were only two places that were
bottling it. Well from there, this is how coca cola
takes off. We have a young man from Chattanooga who
is in the Spanish American War in Cuba.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
His name was Ben Thomas.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
While he's in Cuba, he enjoys a beverage over there
called Frea Pina cold pineapple and it's bottled well. He's
from Chattanooga and he remembers that when he was in Chattanooga,
he used to get coca cola at the counter and
it was really good. He thought, that's it. I'm going
(09:39):
when I get out of here, I'm going back to
Chattanooga and we're going to bottle coca cola. So he
goes back to Chattanooga.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
And he speaks with his friend Joseph Whitehead.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
They were both attorneys and they shared rooms in a
boarding house there, and he presented his idea to him.
He said, we could be partners and do this. So
they chase off to Atlanta, Georgia. They get down there
and meet with mister Candler and say, we want the
rights to bottle Coca cola throughout the United States. We
(10:14):
want the exclusive rights. Well Candler thought, no, he said this,
I don't want to do that. He said, I'm worried
that Coca cola will not have the same flavor in
the bottle. He said, I'm worried about the quality. He said,
to be honest about it, it's a dumb idea, and
I think bobbling is a backstreet business. So, you know,
(10:38):
he chased them away, and they persisted, and finally he said,
all right, I'll tell you what. You go back to
your hotel tonight and you draw up what you think
would be a contract, and you bring it to me
and I'll look at it. So, while they're lawyers, you know,
they go back and they draw up a contract that
gives them the exclusive rights to bottle Coca Cola in
(11:01):
the United States. The next day they go back and
they meet with mister Candler and he looks at it
and he said, well, he said, you can't have all
of the United States, because Joe's already doing it in Mississippi,
so I can't give you Mississippi. But he sold them
the rights to bottle Coca cola exclusively throughout the United
(11:24):
States for one dollar, and it was said that he
never collected the dollar. He just wanted to get rid
of him. And he told them when they left, I
still think it's a dumb idea, and if it doesn't work,
I don't want you to come crying back to me
about it. So here they go. They go back to Chattanooga, right,
(11:46):
the two of them. They now have the rights to
bottle coca cola throughout the United States. Nobody else can
do it. Well. Between the two of them, they've got
fifteen hundred dollars and they have this project called bottle
Coca Cola for everybody. So they start a little bottling
plant and they thought, no, this isn't going to work.
(12:09):
You know, first of all, they weren't real good at it,
and you know, the workers were wearing protective mesh over
their face because the bottles kept exploding, and they thought,
this is not going to work. Then the light goes
on and they said, wait a minute, we've got the rights,
and they said, why don't we start selling territories. That's
(12:31):
what we'll do. So, you know, if you wanted to
bottle Coca Cola and Paduca, Kentucky, they would sell you
a fifty mile territory in Paduca, Kentucky, and that would
be your territory and you could set up your little
bottling plant and sell Coca Cola. And today, I think,
you know, we'd call that franchising. The interesting thing you
(12:54):
may have paid fifteen hundred dollars or whatever for that territory,
but you also so were required to use the Coca
Cola syrup obviously, so you had to order syrup from
Atlanta to make your Coca cola. Well, every time you
ordered a gallon of syrup from Atlanta, the two attorneys
(13:17):
that sold you your territory got a commission on you
purchasing that syrup. So they were gone but not forgotten,
so to speak. And they ultimately both of them got
very rich because of being able to sell the territory.
And you keep the commission on the syrup that was
being used in each territory, and that is how Coca
(13:40):
Cola took off all of a sudden. You've got young,
ambitious business people, entrepreneurs around the country that have scraped
together enough money to buy a territory to bottle coca cola.
So they're out working bodily selling it, promoting it, doing
(14:02):
whatever they can to promote your product. And that's what
really made coca cola grow rapidly in the United States. Well,
that certainly is growing a business from the consumer demand
(14:22):
and not the desire of the owner of the business.
And the interesting thing on all of that is that
the coca cola bottle as we know it didn't really
happen until about nineteen fifteen. You know, these bottlers, Okay,
now they've got syrup and they're going to make coca cola,
(14:43):
But what are you going to put it in? You know?
So what happened is there were any bottle they could
get their hands on, and in the early days, you know,
why do we hear it called pop Because in the
early days, one of the bottles they would get would
have this rubber stopper on the top and when you
opened it, it would go pop. Well, because there was
(15:06):
no standard bottle and bottles were whatever you could get
your hands on. There also became a lot of knockoff products.
People saw what was happening with Coca Cola. So the
next thing you've got, you know, Coca Cola has spilled
with two k's, You've got, chiro cola, You've got. There
(15:26):
were probably sixty seventy different people that at one time
were making a cola beverage. So consequently, the consumer that
would see a bottle and would say something about cola
on it, they would presume it's Coca Cola and they
would buy it. So finally the Coca Cola company said,
(15:47):
wait a minute, we have got to do something about this.
And legally they did go after a couple of companies
that were using the term cola, but they decided the
best plan was in marketing and to have their own
bottle that was the only bottle that would represent Coca
Cola and could not be used by anybody else. It
(16:10):
was a patented design. What they did is they challenged
the bottle manufacturers to a competition, and they said, all right,
bottle manufacturers, you produced the bottle, we'll select one of
them and that will be the bottle. It'll be patented,
and you will be allowed to produce that bottle for
(16:31):
every Coca Cola bottler in the United States. Well, the
challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and in nineteen fifteen,
the five manufacturers each took what they thought should be
the bottle to a Coca Cola Bottler's convention in Atlanta
(16:53):
and presented the bottles.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And you've been listening to Larry J. Roginson tell the
story of Coca Cola's rise, and by the way, to
read his two books on the subject, The Coca Cola
Trail and the Return to the Coca Cola Trail, go
to your local bookstore, or to Amazon or the usual
suspects wherever you get your book. And what a story
about business, About competition, about franchising, about ingenuity and licensing,
(17:23):
all of these business concepts that help propel ideas into
the common culture and to common use, as Coca Cola
has managed to do in this great country. When we
come back more of this remarkable business.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Story, this culture story.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
Here on our American story, and.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We returned to our American stories. When we last left off,
Larry Jorgensen was telling us about how Coca Cola Corporate
decided to have a contest amongst bottle makers to have
a standardized bottle. This was because so many ripoff bottles existed.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, the challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and
in nineteen fifteen, the five manufacturers each took what they
thought should be the bottle to a Coca Cola bottler's
convention in Atlanta and presented the bottles. Well, one was selected.
(18:56):
It was the bottle manufactured by the Root Glass Company
of Terre Haute, Indiana, and it was in fact the
design that we all recognized now as Coca Cola. The
interesting thing on the Coca Cola bottle if you look
at the original bottle, it has and did have for
many many years, a very light green tint to it.
(19:19):
And that in fact was the result of a sand
that the Root Glass Company was getting its sand from
a quarry about fifty miles away from Terra Haute, Indiana. Well,
that sand had, amongst other things, that it had copper
and some other minerals in it. So when the glass
(19:40):
was blown using that sand, it would get a light
green tint because of the minerals that were in the sand.
Coca Cola was so pleased with that that they named
it first. They called it or German green, and that
was going to be the color used in the bottle. Well,
(20:01):
they thought twice about that and decided they would call
it Georgia green. So as time goes on and other
bottle companies are given the rights to make the Coca
Cola bottle, Coca Cola says to them, if the sand
you use in developing the bottle does not contain the
(20:22):
minerals to create the green, you must add them.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Something that happened by accident and something that became a
part of the Coca Cola bottle for decades. Now, yes,
you could go in the store and you could buy
that little six and a half ounce bottle and it's white,
but for many, many decades, it was light green, and
that's the way Coca Cola wanted it. And I guess
(20:51):
there's another side story we need to tell too about
It's not Coca Cola, it's Delta Airlines. Everybody says, well, that,
how does that relate. Well, I'll tell you what. Coca
Cola money created Delta Airlines. What happened was it Beidenharn.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
The family that were the first to ever bottle Coca
Cola in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
They were doing well, and there were five brothers that
were ambitious. They find a bottler in.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Monroe, Monroe, Louisiana, that is.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
And they buy that bottler and that becomes Coca Cola
bottling plant number two for the beden hearns. Well, that evolves.
They continue to buy plants, they continue to grow, and
every time they grow, another brother becomes a bottler. He
goes to whatever the next plant is. And at one
time they were one of the top five independent bottlers
(21:50):
in the United States, and Joe Beidenharn's son, Bernie Beidenharn,
became sort of the leader of the packs, so to speak.
He was the youngest son, and he got interested. There
was a crop dusting company in Monroe, Louisiana, which is
where they were located, and the crop duster needed some help,
(22:13):
wanted to buy some more planes, so mister Bernie Beidenharn
loaned him some money and in return he got some stock.
And this goes on and on needs some more planes,
and all of a sudden they decide we're gonna start
hauling passengers besides spraying crops. We'll start hauling passengers from Dallas,
(22:36):
Texas to Shreveport to Monroe to Georgia, and so they
started hauling passengers. Well. It was then became the Delta
Airline Company based out of Monroe, Louisiana, and once again
mister Beidenharn was right there to help fightansom and to
(22:57):
help them buy planes and to make it all happen.
And it was, in fact, for a long time Monroe,
Louisiana was the corporate headquarters for Delta Airlines. An interesting
story is that at one point, when Delta had gotten
pretty big, they were still located in Monroe as a
(23:19):
corporate headquarters, and they were having their annual meeting of
the board and the investors in Delta Airlines. They were
having it in Monroe. But at that point one of
the investors from a big city, maybe Chicago, who knows where,
stood up and said, you know, I'm whoever I am,
I'm Joe Smith, that I'm from Chicago, and our airline
(23:42):
has gotten so big we should not be meeting in
places like Monroe, Louisiana. We need to be meeting in
bigger towns. You know, I have five thousand shares of
Delta Airlines, and I think, as an investor, we need
to move on and at that point mister Ernie Beidenharn,
who was obviously an investor in attending the meetings, stood
(24:04):
up and said, I'm Bernie Beidenharn, and I have ninety
some thousand shares of Delta Airlines and we'll see you
next year in Monroe. So it was it was an
interesting story how for a long time Coca Cola money
played a big role in what is now the giant
Delta Airlines.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
The Bedenharns would also get involved in baseball, with Ali
Beidenharn building the Beidenhart Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana in the
nineteen twenties. He was there that Alli would pine or
something that we take for granted today.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The baseball park was in fact the first park to
have night lights because he realized it gets pretty warm
in summertime in Shreveport, but nighttime is a good time
for baseball. It's cooler. So they lit the ballpark and
they did amazing things in promoting people to come to
the ballpark to have a Coca Cola. One of the
(25:02):
most amazing things was old Babe Ruth came to town,
and Coca Cola Shreeport promoted him coming to town with
his baseball team to play the Shreeport team, and it
was a tremendous sellout and Old Babe got up there
and slammed a couple home runs. In fact, one of
(25:22):
them he hit so hard it went out of the
park and landed up through the window of a streetcar
that was going by. It was just typical of what
they would do. And today, if you go to Shreveport, Louisiana,
you're gonna find buildings, you're gonna find public hospitals, things
that are named Beidenhard because of what was done then
(25:43):
at that time for the community and obviously to promote
the product. You know, let's realize it. We're getting the
word out about the product and Coca Cola as well
as helping the community. Randy Mayo, who is a great
grandson of Ali Beedenharn basically, he says, he said, was
(26:06):
getting a Coca Cola franchise was like getting the key
to a gold mine. I think Coca Cola will always
be here. You know, one hundred years from now, it
won't be the Coca Cola we know now, but it'll
be Coca Cola owned and Coca Cola promoted and it'll
be equally as important part of what a person enjoys
(26:29):
as it is now. You know, I wish I could
stick around for the next couple generations to see where
they go whatever. And the bottlers that we write about
can be thankful that they are Coca Cola bottlers.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery,
and a special thanks again to Larry Jorgens in his
two books, The Coca Cola Trail and The Return to
the Coca Cola Trail are available at the Usual Suspects
online or at your local bookstories. A story so much
but ingenuity being the key, and enterprise and enterprising entrepreneurs
(27:05):
the story of Coca Cola's rise here on our American
Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love hearing your stories. Send them to our
American Stories dot Com. Up next, a story about a
drink that we all know but might not know the
backstory of. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Coca Cola is arguably the South's most successful export. They
sell around three billion cases of product around the world annually,
but they started out small. Here's Larry Jorgensen, author of
the Coca Cola Trail, with more on that.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Well, Coca coola actually started out as these syrop that
is now the main ingredient in co cola. And the
syrup was invented by John Pemberton who was a pharmacist
in Columbus, Georgia, and had started working on the formula
and then his time of working on the formula was
(01:15):
interrupted by the Civil War and he actually fought in
the Civil War. When he got out of the war,
he had a war injury. You know, stories get twisted
through the years. I heard it was a saber type
injury to his stomach, but whatever, it was definitely from
the war and he was looking to.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Get some relief, relief in the form of a morphine
free painkiller, as he was addicted to the substance at
the time.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
He had studied and he had learned that the cola
nut would create a pretty good flavor and the coca
leaf was known for giving some relief to pain. So
he developed his formula with those two items of mind,
the coca leaf and the colon nut. Now, the coca leaf,
(02:06):
as it was used in producing the coca cola syrup
was not processed and I get this all the time.
It was not processed in a way that would produce cocaine.
There was no cocaine in coca cola. There was the
coca leaf, which I guess if you broke it down
far enough, you'd find common natural ingredients to cocaine.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Such as econaine, a relative or rather a precursor of cocaine.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
But it was not cocaine. It was simply the processed
coca leaf that eliminated the pain to some degree and
helped create the flavor along with the colon nut of
what became coca cola. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where
(02:58):
he perfected his recipe and actually it was on March
twenty ninth, in his backyard in a big three legged kettle,
that he made the first batch of coca cola syrup.
And it was, as they say, for medicinal purposes. He
took it to the local drug store and they served
(03:18):
and you come in, you have a pain, a headache
or whatever. They'd put a little coca cola syrup in
a glass and put in some carbonated water. It worked.
But not only did it work, it tasted good. People
started requesting the drink as something that they enjoyed, not
to necessarily solve a headache or something. So it really
(03:41):
took off from there. But the irony of the thing
is that the man who invented it only owned coca
cola syrup for about three years. He sold the rights
and the formula, et cetera to Asa Candler. Well Ace's
thing in life was he wanted to sell syrup, and
(04:02):
that's all that he wanted to do, and he would
sell it to other drug stores and so forth, and
it was for that purpose. Of that purpose only, he
thought that bottling coca cola was and I will quote
a dumb idea. Well, what happened there was a gentleman
(04:23):
in Vicksburg who owned a candy business and a solo
phontain and very ambitious man by the name of Beidenharn.
And mister Bidenharn was obviously selling the Coca Cola syrup
in his drug store. Well, he also would do things
like he would cater parties in that It so happened
(04:45):
that on one July fourth he was to cater a party,
a picnic, a big July fourth picnic, and to bring
beverages and everything. And what he would do then is
there was a small bottler in Vicksburg who bottled, you know,
lemon and sasparilla and orange and all those things. So
(05:09):
he would go to that bottler and buy at wholesale
some of these bottles of soda that he would take
along to the event he was catering. Well, it so
happened on this July fourth there was such a demand
for product that his order was not available, but yet
he had the customer. So mister Bidenarn went to the
(05:32):
picnic and made lemonade for everybody. And after that picnic
he said, this will never happen again, And he went
to Saint Louis and he bought some second hand bodleling equipment.
Now we're talking about bodiling equipment. That is, you know,
one bottle at a time and you push a foot lever,
(05:52):
you know, to make it happen. And he brought that
back to Vicksburg and started bodling coca cola. He thought,
you know, people really like this drink. I'm going to
bottlet and people in the country, you know, I can
take it to them. They don't have to come to
town to get a coca cola. So he set off
(06:13):
to bottle. The story is the first two cases of
coca cola that he bottled, he sent them to Atlanta
to mister Candler to let him know what he was doing.
And of course Candler was more interested in selling old
Joe Bidenarn some syrup. And Candler you know, wrote back, Tom,
(06:36):
yeah it's okay, but you know it wasn't impressed. And
Joe Bidenarn said, you know, he never sent my bottles back.
So that was the big thing.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
And you're listening to the story of coca cola the
South's most successful export. It had been right up until
the eighteen sixties, seventies and eighties cotton, and thank goodness
that changed for both the health and for coke lovers
across the globe, including myself, a certified coke addict, if
ever there was one. When we come back more of
(07:09):
this remarkable story, Coca Cola is rise here on our
American stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell
(07:32):
about this great country, and especially the stories of America's
rich past, know that all of our stories about American history,
from war to innovation, culture and faith, are brought to
us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place
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(07:52):
to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go
to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we returned
to our American stories and the story of how Coca
(08:13):
Cola got into a bottle. When we last left off,
a man in Vicksburg, Mississippi, named Joe Bidenhearn had decided to,
much to the sugarn of Coca Cola Corporate in Atlanta,
use their syrup to bottle Coca cola himself. Let's continue
with the story, so.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
For five years, Joe Bidenharn is bottling coca cola. Now,
the only other place that was bottling coca cola about
two years after Bidenhard started in Vicksburg, there was a
bottler in Valbasta, Georgia. So within five years of coca
(08:56):
cola being invented, there were only two places that were
bottling it. Well from there, this is how coca cola
takes off. We have a young man from Chattanooga who
is in the Spanish American War in Cuba.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
His name was Ben Thomas.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
While he's in Cuba, he enjoys a beverage over there
called Frea Pina cold pineapple and it's bottled well. He's
from Chattanooga and he remembers that when he was in Chattanooga,
he used to get coca cola at the counter and
it was really good. He thought, that's it. I'm going
(09:39):
when I get out of here, I'm going back to
Chattanooga and we're going to bottle coca cola. So he
goes back to Chattanooga.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
And he speaks with his friend Joseph Whitehead.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
They were both attorneys and they shared rooms in a
boarding house there, and he presented his idea to him.
He said, we could be partners and do this. So
they chase off to Atlanta, Georgia. They get down there
and meet with mister Candler and say, we want the
rights to bottle Coca cola throughout the United States. We
(10:14):
want the exclusive rights. Well Candler thought, no, he said this,
I don't want to do that. He said, I'm worried
that Coca cola will not have the same flavor in
the bottle. He said, I'm worried about the quality. He said,
to be honest about it, it's a dumb idea, and
I think bobbling is a backstreet business. So, you know,
(10:38):
he chased them away, and they persisted, and finally he said,
all right, I'll tell you what. You go back to
your hotel tonight and you draw up what you think
would be a contract, and you bring it to me
and I'll look at it. So, while they're lawyers, you know,
they go back and they draw up a contract that
gives them the exclusive rights to bottle Coca Cola in
(11:01):
the United States. The next day they go back and
they meet with mister Candler and he looks at it
and he said, well, he said, you can't have all
of the United States, because Joe's already doing it in Mississippi,
so I can't give you Mississippi. But he sold them
the rights to bottle Coca cola exclusively throughout the United
(11:24):
States for one dollar, and it was said that he
never collected the dollar. He just wanted to get rid
of him. And he told them when they left, I
still think it's a dumb idea, and if it doesn't work,
I don't want you to come crying back to me
about it. So here they go. They go back to Chattanooga, right,
(11:46):
the two of them. They now have the rights to
bottle coca cola throughout the United States. Nobody else can
do it. Well. Between the two of them, they've got
fifteen hundred dollars and they have this project called bottle
Coca Cola for everybody. So they start a little bottling
plant and they thought, no, this isn't going to work.
(12:09):
You know, first of all, they weren't real good at it,
and you know, the workers were wearing protective mesh over
their face because the bottles kept exploding, and they thought,
this is not going to work. Then the light goes
on and they said, wait a minute, we've got the rights,
and they said, why don't we start selling territories. That's
(12:31):
what we'll do. So, you know, if you wanted to
bottle Coca Cola and Paduca, Kentucky, they would sell you
a fifty mile territory in Paduca, Kentucky, and that would
be your territory and you could set up your little
bottling plant and sell Coca Cola. And today, I think,
you know, we'd call that franchising. The interesting thing you
(12:54):
may have paid fifteen hundred dollars or whatever for that territory,
but you also so were required to use the Coca
Cola syrup obviously, so you had to order syrup from
Atlanta to make your Coca cola. Well, every time you
ordered a gallon of syrup from Atlanta, the two attorneys
(13:17):
that sold you your territory got a commission on you
purchasing that syrup. So they were gone but not forgotten,
so to speak. And they ultimately both of them got
very rich because of being able to sell the territory.
And you keep the commission on the syrup that was
being used in each territory, and that is how Coca
(13:40):
Cola took off all of a sudden. You've got young,
ambitious business people, entrepreneurs around the country that have scraped
together enough money to buy a territory to bottle coca cola.
So they're out working bodily selling it, promoting it, doing
(14:02):
whatever they can to promote your product. And that's what
really made coca cola grow rapidly in the United States. Well,
that certainly is growing a business from the consumer demand
(14:22):
and not the desire of the owner of the business.
And the interesting thing on all of that is that
the coca cola bottle as we know it didn't really
happen until about nineteen fifteen. You know, these bottlers, Okay,
now they've got syrup and they're going to make coca cola,
(14:43):
But what are you going to put it in? You know?
So what happened is there were any bottle they could
get their hands on, and in the early days, you know,
why do we hear it called pop Because in the
early days, one of the bottles they would get would
have this rubber stopper on the top and when you
opened it, it would go pop. Well, because there was
(15:06):
no standard bottle and bottles were whatever you could get
your hands on. There also became a lot of knockoff products.
People saw what was happening with Coca Cola. So the
next thing you've got, you know, Coca Cola has spilled
with two k's, You've got, chiro cola, You've got. There
(15:26):
were probably sixty seventy different people that at one time
were making a cola beverage. So consequently, the consumer that
would see a bottle and would say something about cola
on it, they would presume it's Coca Cola and they
would buy it. So finally the Coca Cola company said,
(15:47):
wait a minute, we have got to do something about this.
And legally they did go after a couple of companies
that were using the term cola, but they decided the
best plan was in marketing and to have their own
bottle that was the only bottle that would represent Coca
Cola and could not be used by anybody else. It
(16:10):
was a patented design. What they did is they challenged
the bottle manufacturers to a competition, and they said, all right,
bottle manufacturers, you produced the bottle, we'll select one of
them and that will be the bottle. It'll be patented,
and you will be allowed to produce that bottle for
(16:31):
every Coca Cola bottler in the United States. Well, the
challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and in nineteen fifteen,
the five manufacturers each took what they thought should be
the bottle to a Coca Cola Bottler's convention in Atlanta
(16:53):
and presented the bottles.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And you've been listening to Larry J. Roginson tell the
story of Coca Cola's rise, and by the way, to
read his two books on the subject, The Coca Cola
Trail and the Return to the Coca Cola Trail, go
to your local bookstore, or to Amazon or the usual
suspects wherever you get your book. And what a story
about business, About competition, about franchising, about ingenuity and licensing,
(17:23):
all of these business concepts that help propel ideas into
the common culture and to common use, as Coca Cola
has managed to do in this great country. When we
come back more of this remarkable business.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Story, this culture story.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
Here on our American story, and.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We returned to our American stories. When we last left off,
Larry Jorgensen was telling us about how Coca Cola Corporate
decided to have a contest amongst bottle makers to have
a standardized bottle. This was because so many ripoff bottles existed.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, the challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and
in nineteen fifteen, the five manufacturers each took what they
thought should be the bottle to a Coca Cola bottler's
convention in Atlanta and presented the bottles. Well, one was selected.
(18:56):
It was the bottle manufactured by the Root Glass Company
of Terre Haute, Indiana, and it was in fact the
design that we all recognized now as Coca Cola. The
interesting thing on the Coca Cola bottle if you look
at the original bottle, it has and did have for
many many years, a very light green tint to it.
(19:19):
And that in fact was the result of a sand
that the Root Glass Company was getting its sand from
a quarry about fifty miles away from Terra Haute, Indiana. Well,
that sand had, amongst other things, that it had copper
and some other minerals in it. So when the glass
(19:40):
was blown using that sand, it would get a light
green tint because of the minerals that were in the sand.
Coca Cola was so pleased with that that they named
it first. They called it or German green, and that
was going to be the color used in the bottle. Well,
(20:01):
they thought twice about that and decided they would call
it Georgia green. So as time goes on and other
bottle companies are given the rights to make the Coca
Cola bottle, Coca Cola says to them, if the sand
you use in developing the bottle does not contain the
(20:22):
minerals to create the green, you must add them.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Something that happened by accident and something that became a
part of the Coca Cola bottle for decades. Now, yes,
you could go in the store and you could buy
that little six and a half ounce bottle and it's white,
but for many, many decades, it was light green, and
that's the way Coca Cola wanted it. And I guess
(20:51):
there's another side story we need to tell too about
It's not Coca Cola, it's Delta Airlines. Everybody says, well, that,
how does that relate. Well, I'll tell you what. Coca
Cola money created Delta Airlines. What happened was it Beidenharn.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
The family that were the first to ever bottle Coca
Cola in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
They were doing well, and there were five brothers that
were ambitious. They find a bottler in.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Monroe, Monroe, Louisiana, that is.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
And they buy that bottler and that becomes Coca Cola
bottling plant number two for the beden hearns. Well, that evolves.
They continue to buy plants, they continue to grow, and
every time they grow, another brother becomes a bottler. He
goes to whatever the next plant is. And at one
time they were one of the top five independent bottlers
(21:50):
in the United States, and Joe Beidenharn's son, Bernie Beidenharn,
became sort of the leader of the packs, so to speak.
He was the youngest son, and he got interested. There
was a crop dusting company in Monroe, Louisiana, which is
where they were located, and the crop duster needed some help,
(22:13):
wanted to buy some more planes, so mister Bernie Beidenharn
loaned him some money and in return he got some stock.
And this goes on and on needs some more planes,
and all of a sudden they decide we're gonna start
hauling passengers besides spraying crops. We'll start hauling passengers from Dallas,
(22:36):
Texas to Shreveport to Monroe to Georgia, and so they
started hauling passengers. Well. It was then became the Delta
Airline Company based out of Monroe, Louisiana, and once again
mister Beidenharn was right there to help fightansom and to
(22:57):
help them buy planes and to make it all happen.
And it was, in fact, for a long time Monroe,
Louisiana was the corporate headquarters for Delta Airlines. An interesting
story is that at one point, when Delta had gotten
pretty big, they were still located in Monroe as a
(23:19):
corporate headquarters, and they were having their annual meeting of
the board and the investors in Delta Airlines. They were
having it in Monroe. But at that point one of
the investors from a big city, maybe Chicago, who knows where,
stood up and said, you know, I'm whoever I am,
I'm Joe Smith, that I'm from Chicago, and our airline
(23:42):
has gotten so big we should not be meeting in
places like Monroe, Louisiana. We need to be meeting in
bigger towns. You know, I have five thousand shares of
Delta Airlines, and I think, as an investor, we need
to move on and at that point mister Ernie Beidenharn,
who was obviously an investor in attending the meetings, stood
(24:04):
up and said, I'm Bernie Beidenharn, and I have ninety
some thousand shares of Delta Airlines and we'll see you
next year in Monroe. So it was it was an
interesting story how for a long time Coca Cola money
played a big role in what is now the giant
Delta Airlines.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
The Bedenharns would also get involved in baseball, with Ali
Beidenharn building the Beidenhart Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana in the
nineteen twenties. He was there that Alli would pine or
something that we take for granted today.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The baseball park was in fact the first park to
have night lights because he realized it gets pretty warm
in summertime in Shreveport, but nighttime is a good time
for baseball. It's cooler. So they lit the ballpark and
they did amazing things in promoting people to come to
the ballpark to have a Coca Cola. One of the
(25:02):
most amazing things was old Babe Ruth came to town,
and Coca Cola Shreeport promoted him coming to town with
his baseball team to play the Shreeport team, and it
was a tremendous sellout and Old Babe got up there
and slammed a couple home runs. In fact, one of
(25:22):
them he hit so hard it went out of the
park and landed up through the window of a streetcar
that was going by. It was just typical of what
they would do. And today, if you go to Shreveport, Louisiana,
you're gonna find buildings, you're gonna find public hospitals, things
that are named Beidenhard because of what was done then
(25:43):
at that time for the community and obviously to promote
the product. You know, let's realize it. We're getting the
word out about the product and Coca Cola as well
as helping the community. Randy Mayo, who is a great
grandson of Ali Beedenharn basically, he says, he said, was
(26:06):
getting a Coca Cola franchise was like getting the key
to a gold mine. I think Coca Cola will always
be here. You know, one hundred years from now, it
won't be the Coca Cola we know now, but it'll
be Coca Cola owned and Coca Cola promoted and it'll
be equally as important part of what a person enjoys
(26:29):
as it is now. You know, I wish I could
stick around for the next couple generations to see where
they go whatever. And the bottlers that we write about
can be thankful that they are Coca Cola bottlers.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery,
and a special thanks again to Larry Jorgens in his
two books, The Coca Cola Trail and The Return to
the Coca Cola Trail are available at the Usual Suspects
online or at your local bookstories. A story so much
but ingenuity being the key, and enterprise and enterprising entrepreneurs
(27:05):
the story of Coca Cola's rise here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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