Secret Formula: The Inside Story of How Coca-Cola Became the Best-Known Brand in the World - Softcover

Allen, Frederick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504019857 ISBN 13: 9781504019859

Publisher: Open Road Media, 2015

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Frederick Allen was an award-winning reporter and political columnist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1972 to 1987, after which he joined CNN as a chief analyst and commentator covering the 1988 presidential election. His essays for the program Inside Politics earned CNN a CableACE Award, and Allen was called the “best political analyst” by the editors of the Hotline. Allen is the author of three books, including his history of the Coca-Cola Company, Secret Formula; Atlanta Rising, a history of modern Atlanta; and A Decent, Orderly Lynching, an account of the vigilantes of Montana. He was honored by the Western History Association with the inaugural Michael P. Malone Award for his research into vigilante symbolism, and is currently working on a book about Theodore Roosevelt. Allen graduated from Phillips Academy (Andover) and earned a BA in journalism from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He and his wife, Linda, live in Atlanta, Georgia, and Big Sky, Montana.

From Kirkus Reviews

An informative and agreeably anecdotal history of the Atlanta- based multinational that, despite the best efforts of archrival PepsiCo, continues to bestride the global soft-drink trade like a colossus. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources and personal interviews, CNN commentator Allen offers a generation-spanning account of how Coca-Cola Co. (which turned 100 in 1986) managed to achieve cultural significance as well as commercial success. While he covers much the same ground as Mark Pendergrast in For God, Country, and Coca-Cola (1993), Allen focuses to good effect on the individuals who have played leading roles in corporate affairs: founding father Asa Candler, a dour hustler who acquired the rights to Pemberton's Tonic, an obscure patent medicine that became the basis of a beverage empire; Robert Woodruff, a banker's son who did more than anyone to build the company's extraordinary consumer franchise; and Cuban-born Roberto Goizueta, the incumbent CEO who, notwithstanding a notable blunder with the flagship brand, has kept Coke on a fast upward track. As its subtitle suggests, Allen attributes Coca-Cola's accomplishments to dedication and merchandizing savvy, not to the exotic ingredients in a soft-drink recipe that's been altered a dozen or more times over the years. In this account, moreover, the company's stewards proved themselves alertly opportunistic during WW II, classically pragmatic when they became early backers of America's civil rights movement, astute students of political risk in any era or venue, and aggressive strategists in the ongoing cola wars. Allen effectively ends his coverage with Woodruff's death at 95 in 1985, touching only lightly on events of the past decade. An engaging audit of a corporate phenomenon that wisely eschews what-it-all-means analysis in favor of a vivid narrative that can speak for itself. (80 photos, not seen) ($30,000 ad promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1504019857
• ISBN 13: 9781504019859
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 510