How was Coca-Cola first sold in 1886?

Answer

Pharmacist John Pemberton created it in Atlanta and sold it at a soda fountain.

Context

The company's own history says Coca-Cola was born in Atlanta on 8 May 1886, when pharmacist John Stith Pemberton carried a jug of syrup to Jacobs' Pharmacy. Customers sampled it mixed with carbonated water at the soda fountain, where it sold for five cents a glass. The company reports average sales of about nine drinks per day in the first year. Pemberton's bookkeeper and partner, Frank Robinson, proposed the name and wrote the script logo.

At that time, soda fountains were often located in pharmacies, and many drinks were promoted as remedies for ailments. Smithsonian Magazine reports that Pemberton marketed his drink as a brain tonic that could help with fatigue and nervous complaints, and he had earlier sold a coca-wine product. Early versions are widely reported to have included extract of the coca leaf, which contains cocaine, as well as caffeine from kola nut; the exact amounts are disputed and not documented in the sources used here. Atlanta's local prohibition law in the mid-1880s is often given as a reason he reworked the wine-based recipe into a non-alcoholic syrup.

Pemberton sold off his interests before dying in 1888, and the businessman Asa Candler gained full control and built it into a national brand. Candler is credited with marketing that moved the product away from its patent-medicine image and toward being a refreshing drink. The coca leaf extract was later changed so that the drink contained no cocaine, according to widely reported histories, though the date is stated differently in different accounts. The central fact stands: the drink began as a medicinal tonic sold at a pharmacy fountain, and its image as a soft drink came afterward.