Coca-Cola’s secret recipe, um, gimmick

We’ve all heard the story. Coca-Cola is so secretive about their drink’s formula that only two living executives know the recipe, and they never fly on the same plane. Also, each executive only knows part of the recipe. And each executive has a successor that is automatically given access to the formula upon his/her predecessor’s death. It’s a very cool story… but it’s just a story. Spokespeople for the soda brand admit that it’s unclear how many people know the recipe, but likely it's more than two. As for the "two executives" part, that originated with a Coke ad campaign and has never been accurate. In Coca-Cola’s early days, the man who invented the drink gave the recipe to everybody who asked. John Pemberton was a pharmacist in the 1880s who invented Coke as a “temperance drink.” Pemberton passed around his recipe to colleagues and friends with such reckless abandon that several journalists—including Ira Glass at This American Life, whose episode linked below is definitely worth a listen—have found identical versions of original recipes from multiple historical sources. Of course, Coke tasted much different back then. It was full of alcohol and had five times the caffeine—oh, and cocaine. Hence the name Coca-Cola. According to people who have made the old recipe (sans the cocaine) it tastes nothing like modern Coke and delivers a serious buzz. Still, the company vehemently denies the journalists have found the proper original recipe. They say the current and original recipe are kept safe in a giant vault hidden underneath the World of Coca-Cola museum. Which is a perfect response to keep the buzz marketing going, and maybe even sell a few museum tickets!