Secret Formula
The Inside Story of How Coca-Cola Became the Best-Known Brand in the World
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A "highly entertaining history [of] global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche" (Publishers Weekly).
Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the original Coca-Cola formula and then struggled to get the cocaine out of the recipe. After many tweaks, he finally succeeded in turning a backroom belly-wash into a thriving enterprise.
In 1919, an aggressive banker named Ernest Woodruff leveraged a high-risk buyout of the Candlers and installed his son at the helm of the company. Robert Woodruff spent the next six decades guiding Coca-Cola with a single-minded determination that turned the soft drink into a part of the landscape and social fabric of America. Written with unprecedented access to Coca-Cola's archives, as well as the inner circle and private papers of Woodruff, Allen's captivating business biography stands as the definitive account of what it took to build America's most iconic company and one of the world's greatest business success stories.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Coca-Cola Company's secretive top executive, Robert Woodruff, threw his support behind presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson, then spurned the loser, Richard Nixon, when he applied for a job at Coca-Cola. Nixon later became senior partner in Pepsi-Cola's outside law firm, while President LBJ, a close ally of Coca-Cola, arranged political favors for the company. These are among the charges presented in this highly entertaining history of a firm that traces its origins to Confederate war hero John Pemberton and his Yankee business partner Frank Robinson, who developed the soft drink in the late 1880s. The book provides a juicy look at wheeling-dealing, litigation, global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche. CNN commentator Allen charts Coke's fortunes through two world wars, European anti-American backlash and the civil rights era, and tells how Woodruff, though a plantation-owning Georgian, supported desegregation in Atlanta with an eye toward selling Coke to people of color around the world. Photos not seen by PW.
