Some of the soft drinks we know today originally started as patent medicines in the late 19th century — including Coca-Cola, which infamously contained cocaine. But when Caleb Bradham invented a drink in 1893 he set out to make it free of stimulants. It didn't even contain caffeine. He originally called it Brad's Drink, but by 1898 it would be trademarked using the name we call it today: Pepsi.


From "Brad's Drink" in the Soviet Union by Ludmilla Grincenko Wells at the University of Tennessee:

Pepsi was original coined as "Brad's Drink" (Martin 1962, 7). It was a concoction formulated as a result of [Caleb] Bradham's experimentation with cola nuts and spices in the early 1890s. Accounts differ as to whether Bradham renamed his product "Pepsi-Cola" on or before August 28, 1898. Louis and Yazijian (1980, 49) suggested that by 1893 Bradham had changed the name to "Pepsi-Cola." However, the 1898 "North Carolina application for registration of the Pepsi-cola trademark... [was] given as the date of the first use of the trademark" (Martin 1962, 8)


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Image via Associated Press circa 1905: On April 5, 1905 Pepsi's first home office and bottling plant was built in New Bern, N.C.