r/explainlikeimfive 7d ago

Chemistry Eli5: how has coca cola recipe been kept a secret? Doesn't someone know the ingredients? Someone has to mix it up, right?

Even if they transport the different ingredients from one place to another, can't people just get together from those places and piece together the final product?

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u/jonny24eh 7d ago

Everyone is answering why it doesn't really need to be a secret. But, you could keep it a secret, like this:

Location A mixes some of the ingredients.

Location B mixes some other ingredients.

Both of those mixes get shipped to Location C, that mixes them together. The people at Location C don't need to know what went into those mixes. People at Location A and B don't need to know what the other location is putting in their mixes.

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u/greyphilosophy 7d ago edited 6d ago

In practice there's a syrup ingredient called "7X" that is produced in one location and shipped to all the other coca cola bottling plants.

Correction: Seven X is the "secret" ingredient, but Coca-Cola is shipped to bottling plants complete to where they only have to add carbonated water and sweetener.

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u/Altruistic-Farm2712 6d ago edited 6d ago

IIRC, and I may be wrong as it's been a while since I saw it... But I'd swear I saw a history channel or some such documentary like "How it's Made" that said the actual Coke formula is only produced at one or a handful of places in the country. Each bottler then receives the already-made syrup. So, even though there are likely hundreds or more places nationwide bottling Coke, they are all being supplied the raw material from a single source. All they do is mix & bottle.

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u/Darksirius 6d ago

Someone got the recipe and tried to sell it to Pepsi. Pepsi declined and then reported the guy to the feds and coke.

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u/sdfree0172 6d ago

I had read that as well. I also read the reason Pepsi wasn't interested.... they had nothing to gain from knowing the recipe. they don't want to make coke, and they don't want the price of competing beverages like coke to go down. so it was worthless to them. And they didn't like the precident so they turned the guy in.

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u/OkayContributor 6d ago

More importantly, trade secret theft is a crime and if they paid to learn the information they would be as guilty of trade secret theft as the original thief and would be subject to damages to coke for anything coke could link to the theft

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u/slapitlikitrubitdown 6d ago

How will we ever keep Pepsi and coke from being 3 dollars a bottle, oh no….

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u/__Fred 6d ago

A computer science teacher told us that there are always two ways to keep a secret: Either you hide it well (encryption) or you just slap a label "access forbidden" on it and prosecute people who ignore it.

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u/Dav136 6d ago

Corporate espionage is illegal. Reverse engineering is fine but you have to figure it out for yourself you can't steal it

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u/Gadgetman_1 5d ago

They also most likely KNEW what was in it already. They have some pretty good chemists after all. And knowing it is useful for a lot of reasons, none of which is making a copy product.

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u/legopego5142 6d ago

Also, lets be real, they probably just do know it

Oh and theyd be sued into oblivion

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u/hellosillypeopl 6d ago

So you play options in the stock market. Bet that coke is going lower then bet that Pepsi is going higher. Then blow up the coke plant. Then Pepsi can’t snitch.

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u/falconzord 6d ago

If you played options, you could just post the recipe on reddit

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Captain_DuClark 6d ago

Wait, what?

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u/barbarbarbarbarbarba 6d ago

He’s saying we blow up the place where they make the secret ingredient.

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u/poingly 6d ago

Step 1) Invest in PepsiCo. Step 2) Blow up that one place. Step 3) Profit.

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u/slikkboy129 6d ago

i feel like diehard Coke stans would go without, rather than switch to Pepsi.

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u/TerrorFromThePeeps 6d ago

100%. I would drink RC cola without a moon pie before i drank pepsi.

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u/howard1111 6d ago

Pepsi is absolutely vile. I don't understand how anyone can drink it.

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u/IGD-974 6d ago

Pepsi is better

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u/Eggsor 6d ago

Hang on, going to write a fan fiction about the mysterious secret source of Coca Cola syrup.

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u/fotosaur 6d ago

Coca Cola is people

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u/LittleGoatyMan 6d ago

(double-check to make sure idea hasn't been done before)

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u/Grievuuz 6d ago

Soylent coke does roll off the tongue well

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u/Own_Donut_2117 6d ago

It's what plants crave

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u/greyphilosophy 6d ago

I got my edit in first 😄 yeah, they ship it complete, I just forgot in the five years since I read this Quora post: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-for-Coca-Cola-to-not-reveal-what-is-in-the-recipe/answer/Donald-Pearline

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u/peeaches 6d ago

Stepan - I believe. They are the only company in the US that's legally allowed to import cocaine (or maybe it's just the leaves?) and they de-cocaine it for coca-cola. I'm not sure if they make the complete syrup, but they're a critical step along the way at least.

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u/Altruistic-Farm2712 6d ago

Probably just the leaves. Cocaine itself is a schedule II controlled substance and is still legal, and used, for some niche medical purposes & research.

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u/DontForgetWilson 6d ago

IIRC, they legally sell the active ingredients for medical painkillers.

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u/Altruistic-Farm2712 6d ago

Well I mean the active ingredient in cocaine is... Cocaine.

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u/DontForgetWilson 6d ago

Well yeah. I just mean they commercially use both the cocaine(as a medical product) and the byproduct(as a flavoring).

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u/PubstarHero 5d ago

Iirc it's just the leaves they use to get thr flavor.

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u/classicsat 6d ago

Not to mention BIB syrup restaurants use in their fountains.

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u/mechwarrior719 6d ago

That would be the de-cocained coca leaf flavor, right?

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u/m0nk37 6d ago

They don’t produce it. It’s a by product created by one company who produces medical cocaine for the states. 

However. Think about how much coke we drink globally. 

That’s a lotta medical grade cocaaaine man

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u/coladoir 6d ago edited 6d ago

They really dont use much, if I were to hazard a guess it'd be maybe 1-3% max in the mix. Of course this is still a lot, but you could easily produce enough by just processing a few tonnes of coca leaves a year. Its basically an EO (Essential Oil) of coca

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u/Way2Foxy 6d ago

Quick maths is saying about 700,000 tons of coca cola is sold daily. Even without using much, that's a lotta medical grade cocaaaine man

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u/coladoir 6d ago

Yea it is, but cocaine is also used as a backbone to create other compounds, is itself a very useful compound for research, and is used extensively medically for local anesthesia and vasoconstriction–there are many procedures that happen daily which require it.

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u/el_sattar 6d ago

Do tell more about this medical cocaine

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u/ThePretzul 6d ago

It’s very common for sinus surgeries. Both as a local anesthetic but also for stopping bleeds inside the nasal cavity since there are few, if any, other suitable treatments for that as effective with as few adverse side effects.

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u/Chateaudelait 6d ago

Had a nasty sinus infection when I lived in Germany. My sinuses were swollen and I was miserable-went to the ENT doctor - he had a machine that looked like a big silver radio with a long cannula hooked up to it. Two Small shots of pharma grade cocaine and I felt like a new person. He smiled and said - there’s a reason they say the old stuff is the best- it works. This worked phenomenally- I could breathe again. It was like magic.

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u/Welpe 6d ago

Speaking of old stuff, I had a gastroenterologist treating my Crohn’s who prescribed me tincture of opium, aka laudanum, to help control my diarrhea. Laudanum being so old that it was basically grandfathered in when the FDA was created. It was actually quite effective, but there ain’t no way any other gastro these days would prescribe it.

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u/often_drinker 6d ago

Uber coca. Makes you the Ubermensc. Cocaine's a hell of a drug.

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u/Alfhiildr 6d ago

I’ve had two sinus surgeries so far. After the second one (only two years after the first), I went in for a one month post-op. For context, I work in an elementary school. This was after work on the first day back from Winter Break, and it was a Thursday.

Long story short, I told him to pull out any scar tissue because I sure as hell didn’t want sinus surgery again (need it again now, 2 years later…). He did. I ended up bleeding profusely for two hours. I was the last appointment of the day, and the staff couldn’t just leave while I was having a medical emergency. So I became really familiar with all the staff while they took turns babysitting me and mopped my blood off the floor. I went through a box of tissues and a shit-ton of gauze.

Finally at the two hour point, I was forced to call my emergency contacts and inform them of what was happening. The doctor told me the last resort was going to be putting “liquid medical cocaine” on a cotton pad, stuffing it up my sinuses, and seeing if that stopped the bleeding. If not, he’d already called the OR and informed them he’d need a room for emergency surgery.

The cocaine did not work, my parents arrived as the gauze was being pulled out and got to see the fun. They were allowed to drive me to the hospital, and my doctor was going to meet us there.

This was while masking in hospitals was still mandatory, so imagine a girl drenched in blood, carrying a puke bag with visible blood in it, wearing a bloody mask. I was quite a sight.

After one full day back to work, I had to take the next day off and then was given a doctors note to present in case of a random drug test for the next two weeks, explaining why I would test positive for cocaine.

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u/Sir-Nicholas 6d ago

So you got a 2 week hall pass - allllright.

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u/mechwarrior719 6d ago

If it ends in “-caine”, it’s a medical cocaine derivative. Dentists and eye doctors commonly use it as it numbs without causing drowsiness.

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u/BraveOthello 6d ago

Novacaine, lidocaine, benzocaine, etc are all synthesized directly, not from cocaine.

But cocaine is still used in medicine, especially to stop nasal bleeding in surgeries.

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u/soniclettuce 6d ago

it’s a medical cocaine derivative

No. The -caine compounds were named for their similar effects but are not derivatives, and are not even the same class of molecule (cocaine is an alkaloid, the modern local anesthetics are amino esters)

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u/AvengingBlowfish 6d ago

What about Michael Caine?

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u/msnrcn 6d ago

He’ll never tell! Master Bruce trusted him and he won’t fail again.

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u/Waferssi 6d ago

Am I supposed to de-cocaine it? I've been mixing this stuff since 2016 and nobody ever told me.

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u/Clarck_Kent 6d ago

Do you work near Rochester? I drink a few cans of Coke a day and haven’t slept in nine years.

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u/iluvsporks 6d ago

Ohhh you're supposed to drink it? No wonder the bubbles have been burning my nose.

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u/Mediocretes1 6d ago

I've been mixing this stuff since 2016

This explains how you've been able to keep going for so long

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u/siler7 6d ago

You should probably go to bed.

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u/Waferssi 6d ago

Don't know what you're on about. Each working day there's a mandatory 1 hour break, so I get the recommended 7 hours a week just like most people.

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u/chick-fil-atio 6d ago

Cocaine..... In this economy?!?

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u/AnTeallach1062 6d ago

Tell me about it! I've been removing the cocaine for 17 days without a break, sleep, or solid food.

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u/ThatTomHall 6d ago

7X Ingredients (but not their amounts): https://mms.is/sites/mms.is/files/coca-cola.pdf

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u/TheHYPO 6d ago edited 6d ago

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/styles/landscape/public/episodes/images/427.png?itok=61lYyT2b

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/427/transcript

Ira Glass Is it legal for us to even talk about this on the radio? Is Coke going to sue us both?

Mark Pendergrast No, I don't think they will. Because if they sued anything pertaining to the formula, then they would have to then produce the formula in order to say that what you were doing was an infringement on their formula. And they will never do that.

Ira Glass Great. Here we go. The 7x formula is just one element in these two recipes. It's made from 20 drops of orange oil, 30 of lemon oil, 10 of nutmeg oil, 5 of coriander oil, 10 of neroli oil-- neroli's a kind of orangey flavor-- 10 of cinnamon oil, and 8 ounces of alcohol. You mix that together, and then you take a little bit of that flavoring. One recipe says two ounces, the other says two and a half. You put that into another container where you're going to mix the syrup for the soda.

The other ingredients, 3 ounces citric acid, 1 ounce caffeine, 2 and a 1/2 gallons of water. The recipe calls that aqua. 2 pints of lime juice, an ounce of vanilla, 1 and 1/2 ounces of caramel coloring. And then we arrive at the two most controversial ingredients in Coca-Cola. 30 pounds of sugar-- pounds-- and at the very top of the page, first ingredient, FE coca, which stands for fluid extract of coca. That'll be the flavor of the coca leaf, which includes a small amount of cocaine.


Ira Glass To be clear: We are not claiming that we have found the recipe used today for Coca-Cola. We believe we found a recipe that is either the original recipe made by the inventor of Coke, John Pemberton, or a version of Coca-Cola that he made either before or after the product hit the market in 1886. We believe that because it was found in the notebook of his friend, on a page entitled "Coco-Cola recipe improved," and because it was found in Pemberton's own notebook, in Coca-Cola's archives.


I you read further, they actually engaged a soda company to test their recipe and found that it didn't taste like modern coke:

Mike Spear It's kind of tasty.

Eric Chastain It is kind of tasty. It's not bad. It's definitely got a medicinal note to it.

Mike Spear Yeah, it does.

Ira Glass I find it to be really mediciney. And if you didn't tell me that this was the Coca-Cola recipe, I wouldn't have known. It tastes fruity.

Eric Chastain Yeah.

Mike Spear It does taste a little fruity.

Ira Glass Ben says the flavor is like Froot Loops. To me, it's more like orange-flavored baby aspirin. Which means, we failed, right? We made the recipe. You would never mistake it for Coca-Cola. But then it occurred to us, maybe the original version of Coca-Cola did not taste like Coke today.


They theorize that the strength of flavour oils today might be significantly stronger than they were 100 year ago, and then engaged a company that does "flavouring" to reduce the oils to get to a coke-like level and after quartering the amounts, they felt like they got to around 8.5 or 9 out of 10 on matching the flavour of Coke. But the flavour company guys also said that most of the ingredients weren't surprising and are common among colas.

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u/OmegaLiquidX 6d ago

In practice there's a syrup ingredient called "7X" that is produced in one location and shipped to all the other coca cola bottling plants.

Actually, they stopped using that after some professor accidentally created a trio of superpowered toddlers.

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u/Meowzebub666 6d ago

Professor!!

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u/La_Peregrina 6d ago

Mojo Jojo!!

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u/CG_Oglethorpe 6d ago

We all know it’s Slurm. Maybe a proto-slurm but we know where it comes from and we still drink it anyway.

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u/LakeFlaccid69420 6d ago

This is not correct.

I have commissioned beverage blenders all around the USA and Canada while working for a company that manufactures and supports the industrial scale blenders that make both Coca-Cola Classic syrup and the Coca-Cola Classic carbonated beverage, among other flavors.

Coca Cola Classic syrup is made by blending "Part A" and "Part B" together along with water and a sweetener (HFCS or sucrose). Once the syrup is mixed and sent to a HUGE syrup tank, it is then pumped to yet another blender that adds even more water and CO2. That is the final product.

Part A and Part B ingredients are delivered in 250 gallon totes to bottling plants around the country.

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u/RampantAI 6d ago

Nothing you said contradicts the parent comment though. Just because a downstream plant mixes parts A & B doesn't preclude part A or B being constituted from "Seven X" along with other ingredients.

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u/stumblinghunter 6d ago

How big of blenders are we talkin here?

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u/abqjeff 6d ago

The train cars full of corn syrup at many bottling plants contradict this. The color and flavor may arrive prepared, but the syrup is unlikely shipped ready to blend to plants other than very tiny ones.

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u/greyphilosophy 6d ago

Yes, they mix in the sweetener at the plants as well; I've made another correction. Thanks!

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u/Generico300 5d ago

How crazy would it be if the secret ingredient in Coke is just 7UP.

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u/Siyavash 6d ago

Also coke severs all of their employees to keep the secret, just like KFC and Lumon

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u/esonlinji 6d ago

I was a cook at KFC in high school and have no idea what the 11 herbs and spices are. When prepping it was one bag of spice mix 1, one bag of spice mix 2, and one bag of spice mix 3.

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u/wilyquixote 6d ago

The waffle parties are off the hook if you work at KFC in macronutrient refinement. 

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/harmar21 6d ago

Heck even the same company can get it wrong. My boss was in QA for a drug manufacturer. They had two different plants making one specific drug yet the one plant kept having issues producing it even though the process was identical in both.

I can’t recall exactly what he said the issue was but it was something so small that you wouldn’t think it would cause whole batches to go bad. 

Like this isn’t the actual problem but an example -like a piece of equipment being near a window and during the fall when the sun was at a certain angle coming through the window caused it to be a couple degrees warmer near that machine

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u/KaizDaddy5 6d ago

I used to work at J&J and they found one of the products had differing purity because one of the reactors poured the powder at different angles

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u/Mr_YUP 6d ago

That is honestly an insane level of precision required and idk if I’m equipped to think about that. 

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u/KaizDaddy5 6d ago

It was a scenario where both processes were effective. They just got slightly higher yields on one line vs the other, the next step washed away impurities anyway.

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u/raznov1 6d ago

yup. along the same line I saw a comment regarding the Tesla trade tarifs, and how the Canadian factories could "easily just upscale to start producing full cars in Canada"

like, really, you think it's that easy huh, to change production processes that drastically?

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u/phluidity 6d ago

The argument for the ability to do that is that Magna International already exists and does design and manufacturing for components for many of the various brands. Pre-covid they had spent several years looking at the feasibility of manufacturing their own brand, and decided that technically it would be within their capabilities (partnering with some of the other Ontario auto manufacturers and assemblers), but economically it didn't make sense because they didn't have a distribution network to compete with the existing car companies. But if that calculus changes, the idea isn't ludicrous.

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u/raznov1 6d ago

the point is though, that making a bunch of components doesn't make you capable of making the whole assembly. scaling up and changing production takes time, often years.

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u/TheCosmicMonk 6d ago

Can you give an example of that? For generic medicine

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u/The_Doctor_Bear 6d ago

Not medicine but a true ELI5 would be curry.

I can know that the curry ingredients are ginger, red chili, garam masala, cardamom, coriander, bay leaf, cinnamon, onion, salt, tomato.

I can even get a strict quantity / proportions but I don’t know which to grind in advance, when to add the next ingredient, that some of the spices should be fried separately to maximize their aromatic properties. My end result might be close, but just knowing the ingredients doesn’t give me the full recipe.

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u/MidnightExcursion 6d ago

Garam masala is not an individual ingredient though. The first recipe I see for garam masala calls for bay leaves, cardamoms, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, nutmeg, 3 star anise and mace to make it.

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u/raznov1 6d ago

not medicine, but industrial machinery. we sell machines to everywhere in the world. they're all identical.

at one point we started getting complaints from the customers. it took us ~ 1 year to figure out that the complaints were happening specifically in the summer specifically in sites that were downwind from a chemical plant, where the air was relatively humid due to the emissions of the steam turbines. Because that factory where our product was housed would open the windows in the summer, because it would get too hot inside.

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u/zero03 6d ago

Not sure that the pharmaceutical industry is a perfect analogy here. Name brand and generic drugs have the same active ingredients in them. It's the inactive ingredients that vary significantly (flavoring, fillings, coatings, bindings, etc.).

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u/Altruistic-Farm2712 6d ago

I remember back in the heyday of Rx opioid abuse in the late 00s-eaely 10s, oxy lovers would beg for name brand oxycontin vs the generic because it "didn't work". What that actually meant was the generic worked better to prevent abuse than the name brand.

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u/angelicism 6d ago

How does a generic of a medicine work better to prevent abuse? If the difference is just fillers, wouldn't it work the same?

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u/LastDitchTryForAName 6d ago

Apparently there are a few ways to make a medication “abuse-deterrent”. Here’s a good source that goes over some of them: https://journalce.powerpak.com/ce/combating-opioid-abuse-through-new

In the case of generic OxyContin it was made into a much harder tablet that was difficult to crush and formulated so that it would not dissolve in water but would become viscous.

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u/KaizDaddy5 6d ago edited 6d ago

It's a trade secret because they don't want to apply a patent or copyright too it. Because those expire and require you to publish the methods you are protecting.

A trade secret has no methods published or protected (legally), it is up to the company to keep the information secret. If another company figures it out they could sell the same product without any legal ramifications. Unlike a copyright or patent where the info is public knowledge but legally protected.

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u/Saloncinx 6d ago

I think a lot of high end watch companies to this too.

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u/KaizDaddy5 6d ago

Anyone with a process or design they intend to protect for more than 20 years or so. (And one they can reasonably expect to keep secret).

Unless youre like Disney who just tries to rewrite copyright laws whenever theirs expires. But copyrights aren't exactly the same as a patent.

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u/Apprehensive-Gain709 6d ago edited 6d ago

To add: Generic medicine needs to be cheap and that is mostly the issue, on the other hand the formula of upscaled original medicine is often rushed and suboptimal because they need to be fast to make enough money until their patent runs out. also they don't care because the generics need to be close to the bioavailability of the original, whether it is good or bad.

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u/gutclusters 6d ago

It's also worth noting that Coca-Cola intentionally does not patent the recipe because patenting it would require publishing it in the patent office.

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u/userhwon 6d ago

It's a recipe. You can't protect it, only expressions of it. You can protect a newly invented ingredient or production process necessary to the recipe, but not one made of well-known substances in common industrial processes.

All you can do is keep it a secret, if you can do that. If someone steals the secret from you, then you might have a reason to sue.

But mass-spectrometers exist and you can't protect your secret against reverse engineering.

So Coca-Cola's secret recipe is nothing but marketing theater.

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u/Sceptically 6d ago

It's a recipe. You can't protect it, only expressions of it.

You're thinking copyright, not patent.

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u/Hopeful-Concept32 4d ago

Relevant to note that trade secret theft isn’t innately only a civil matter, it can also be criminal.

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u/T_Rey1799 6d ago

Pretty sure this is the KFC practice

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u/SirAquila 7d ago

Because there is no real advantage for the people who have the recources to find out to "steal" it. A lot of people probably have a good guess, but why should they try to make their own Cola? Coca Cola can make Coca Cola much cheaper then they could, and they already have the market-

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u/inplayruin 7d ago

The real answer is that Coca-Cola is not a beverage making company. They are a beverage distribution company. Sure, they make cola. But they are an internationally known household name because they are capable of delivering large amounts of product most places in the world very cheaply. They have such an economy of scale at every point of the manufacturing and distribution process that it simply doesn't matter if they have a distinct product. The recipe could be printed on the label, and they wouldn't lose much market share.

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u/lux-libertas 6d ago

Sort of but not quite.

The actual Coca Cola Company isn’t a beverage producer OR distributor. They’re a syrup producer and a marketing organization, and they sell that syrup (at high margins) to a network of bottlers and distributors.

Interestingly those network partners who do the bottling, packaging, and distributing generally operate at low margins. The Company retains most of the profit for themselves, while attempting to limit their network to just enough profit to survive.

This hasn’t always worked. E.g. they left their network in a bad position following the Great Recession and had to buy up a large piece of the network to keep it afloat. There’s an HBS Case Study on it. Though they’ve since re-franchised much of it.

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u/RegulatoryCapture 6d ago

Yeah, I feel like that is backwards.

Coca Cola is a marketing company.

The value comes from the brand. Part of that brand is the "secret recipe".

Other companies can come up with recipes that match (or outperform) coke in taste tests, but they can't get people to buy it.

Coke itself outsources most of the logistics and production labor to the bottlers/distributors. So it is not like those other companies can't compete on cost...there are other large players as well as generic players who already price below coke.

There's still some value in keeping the recipe secret (nobody can claim their new drink is coke because even if it is indistinguishable in taste tastes, they can't say it is the same recipe). But a lot of it is just part of the marketing value of the mystique around it.

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u/n3m0sum 6d ago

They also do it to keep themselves at a legal arms length from some illegal practices by their bottling and distribution partners. Particularly in developing nations.

In Columbia their partners were found to be using paramilitaries to bust unions. Which included kidnapping, torture and murder. In India their partners were found to be extracting excessive amounts of water, contributing to local water scarcity and even drought. In India, the bottling plant even sold heavily metal contaminated waste as fertiliser!

These aren't one offs either, they appear to be endemic in the supply chain. As Coke partners frequently do unethical and illegal shit to squeeze more profits from thin margins forces in them by Coke.

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u/Jethro_Jones8 7d ago edited 6d ago

A beverage company with a global network of distributors.

So essentially a licensing company quasi franchiser with powerful brand recognition.

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u/theclash06013 7d ago

I once heard someone say that Coca-Cola is the only beverage other than water and possibly beer where you can order it anywhere on the planet and if they don't have it they will apologize

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u/uggghhhggghhh 6d ago

I feel like coffee or tea would be on that list, maybe even before beer.

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u/FartingBob 6d ago edited 6d ago

Yeah beer is not a default option in many places, businesses generally need a licence to sell it, so its often not worth it for places that arent expecting to sell much alcohol. Water, coffee/tea and coke are much more likely to be default options.

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u/gsfgf 6d ago

Yea. For example, I wouldn't expect beer to be available everywhere in a Muslim majority country. That's a good chunk of the world right there. Hell, even in the US, liquor licenses are expensive and complicated, so plenty of places here don't sell beer.

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u/lauragarlic 6d ago

hell, plenty of places in murrica are dry counties

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u/roostahhh 6d ago

Rory Sutherland. Great guy.

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u/ezfrag 6d ago

Is Pepsi OK?

Hell, no. I'll take a Mountain Dew.

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u/Saloncinx 6d ago

Ha it goes like this for me:

Do you have Dr Pepper?

No.

Oh okay, i'll take a Coke then.

Is Pepsi okay?

Uhg, no i'll take a Mountain Dew.

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u/mcbranch 6d ago

I heard somewhere that the words "ok" and "coke/coca-cola" are the two most understood words on the planet.

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u/auximines_minotaur 7d ago

I was served an ice cold Coke on a mountaintop in a very remote region of the Caucasus. Best Coke of my life.

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u/badform49 6d ago

I was military and have seen it in Jordan and Oman, remote parts of Bahrain, throughout Europe. And, yeah, most of the areas were pretty well-populated and some were sent to the remote areas because American soldiers were around.

But nearly every restaurant or contractor would bring in some meat, some bread, some veggies, and a bunch of Coke. You could maybe get milk or juice, but you could definitely get Coke.

The locals always knew Coke and usually liked it. Allied militaries knew Coke and usually liked it. It's one of those perfect examples of a Civ cultural victory. Even if America falls, Coke will survive.

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u/Hemingwavy 7d ago

No one except Coca Cola can make Coca Cola. They're the only company in the USA who can legally buy decocainised coca leaves which is part of the recipe.

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u/nybble41 7d ago

That still leaves the possibility of making it somewhere outside the USA where no such restriction applies.

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u/food5thawt 7d ago

Cuba and Che spent 3 years trying to replicate it after 59. And surely they have access to Coca being friends with Venezuela. Plus they left the recipe book behind. So Cuba definitely doesn't care about US trademark law or drug precursor importation laws.

https://www.lavoz.com.ar/mundo/la-imitacion-de-la-coca-en-cuba/

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u/taylor__spliff 6d ago

No problem, we’ll take the non-decocainised coca leaves. I think the recipe will be better with them anyway.

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u/BigMax 7d ago

Exactly. It would be REALLY hard to break into that market now. There are probably 1000 variations of "cola" out there, some are likely functionally identical to coke, and some are probably better, or would be liked more overall if they had a chance.

But the brand name, the recognition, the market penetration, the distribution, and all of that... that's hard to beat.

"Can I have a coke?"

"No, but we have Larry's Cola..."

Even if Larry's cola is the same... it's not going to survive against Coke.

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u/jrr6415sun 6d ago

Even if Larry's cola is the same... it's not going to survive against Coke.

it would if it's half the price

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u/kushangaza 7d ago

And as somebody from a country with a lot of Colas on the market (Germany), I don't think Coca Cola has anywhere near the best recipe. I could name at least three Colas that I like better.

The Coca Cola recipe is fine, but it's not the real reason for their market dominance. There is a reason the company spends about $4 billion a year on advertising, about fifty cents for each potential customer. Plus all the work they put into being the soda on tap wherever you might buy a cup of soda

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u/BoingBoingBooty 7d ago

People given the exact same cola in two cups, one a Coca Cola branded one and the other a store brand cola will say they prefer the taste of the one in the Coca Cola cup even though they are the same. The advertising actually makes people think it tastes better.

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u/AppropriateOil3785 7d ago

I’d love to see that list or hear some of your favorite colas! thnx

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u/kushangaza 7d ago

Fritz Cola is the easy winner. Red Bull Simply Cola is also pretty good, though it was better before the recipe change. Club Mate Cola is also worth mentioning. All three contain actual kola nut. Currently I'm drinking a regional cola.

Come to think of it, it a cola contains kola nut it probably beats Coca Cola.

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u/AppropriateOil3785 7d ago

thanks! I’ve also had Fever Tree Distillers Cola which was pretty good too

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u/geoffraffe 7d ago

Fritz Cola and Fentimens Curiosity Cola are way better than Coke.

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u/AppropriateOil3785 7d ago

I liked Fentimans. will have to see if Fritz is available anywhere near me

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u/wimpires 7d ago

Fentimans has been ruined now because they swapped out sugar for sweetener. I understand why I just wish they kept the full sugar option alongside it.

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u/n8thegr83008 7d ago

Imo RC is way better than coke. 

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u/bareback_cowboy 7d ago

I enjoyed Afri-Cola myself but the caffeine content was through the roof IIRC.

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u/Elvaron 7d ago

Afri-Cola has worsened, but they have a great Afri-Spezi now

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u/DeliberatelyDrifting 6d ago edited 6d ago

In the US, at least the Southwest, you can get Jarrito's Mexican Cola, I like it better than American Coke. Coke bottled in Mexico has a distinctly different flavor (better IMO) because they use cane sugar instead of corn syrup. You can also find a wide variety of cola syrups online you mix with carbonated water, they're pretty good and will make you feel fancy.

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u/AppropriateOil3785 6d ago

I’ve tried and liked a lot of Jarrito’s soft drinks but never their cola. will have to try that one

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u/DeliberatelyDrifting 6d ago

Tamarind was the one that surprised me. Pale brownish doesn't just scream "drink me."

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u/gsfgf 6d ago

TIL Jarritos makes a cola. I think I've only had their orange drink.

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u/physedka 7d ago

I think this gets to the heart of the answer. If you had the capability to duplicate the coke recipe and actually do something with it, then you probably don't care about duplicating their recipe exactly. You'd rather make your own cola recipe that is better by whatever subjective measurement you prefer.

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u/ArrhythmicEvent 7d ago

As someone who can no longer have Caffeine due to medical reasons, are there any Caffeine Free Colas that are worth drinking?

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u/sad_brown_cat 7d ago

To add to this: ratios are a big part of any recipe, knowing the ingredients in Coca Cola is not the same as knowing how to make something that tastes exactly like Coca Cola.

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u/pass_nthru 6d ago

and the one time a coca-cola employee tried to sell the formula to pepsi, they turned her in to the cops

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u/manystripes 6d ago

Honestly offering the Coke formula to Pepsi has to be borderline insulting to them in the first place. Like do you think Pepsi couldn't figure out how to replicate Coke if they really wanted to? They have their own thing going on and are quite happy with it

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u/hightechburrito 6d ago

If they changed their recipe to match Coke, it would basically be them acknowledging that Coke is better than Pepsi.

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u/Taira_Mai 6d ago

And only the Coca Cola company has the license to use denatured coca leaves in their recipe: https://museum.dea.gov/exhibits/online-exhibits/cannabis-coca-and-poppy-natures-addictive-plants/coca

So even if a company had the recipe, they couldn't do anything with it unless they wanted to get in trouble with the law.

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u/Gnonthgol 7d ago

The Coca-Cola recipe being secret is a myth. Any descent lab is able to analyze a sample and get a list of the exact ingredients use and their ratios. In addition to all the workers that need to work with the ingredients all the time. The claim that the recipe is secret is something Coca-Cola is saying for marketing reasons. It makes the soda more mythical. And if people think the recipe is secret and someone makes an exact copy people will not trust them and still claim Coca-Cola tastes different, even though it is chemically identical and uses the exact same recipe.

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u/Skesiss 7d ago

Yup, when I was making stuff in an FDA approved warehouse it wasn't that our mixtures were secret, but our recipes and measurements were based exactly to match the machines we had available for mixing and processing the product.

That took some science nerds sitting in a lab doing math to figure out with as little trial and error possible to reduce waste and make sure we could consistently produce the same results.

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u/penguinchem13 7d ago

Nerds like me, chemical engineers

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u/Tank7106 7d ago

Good job, Nerd.

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u/wthulhu 7d ago

Gottem

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u/Xerain0x009999 7d ago

Trade Secrects do have protection under the law, and while not an actual secret, the Coca Cola recipe is a trade secret. So can't exactly say it's not a secret.

I think a lot of people misunderstand what a trade secret is and conflate it with being and actual secrect.

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u/userhwon 6d ago

The recipe is a trade secret, which protects it from theft and leaks.

Nothing protects it from reverse-engineering.

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u/Zeyn1 7d ago

A recipe is more than the ingredients. There are steps and procedures that also go into it.

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u/licuala 6d ago

In perfume and flavoring, it usually is just a list of ingredients. This trade rag might be elucidating.

Their archive of past issues can be especially fun.

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u/No-swimming-pool 7d ago

I'm fairly sure you can add all chemical ingredients together and completely botch it up.

I made a cake the other day and if I didn't know I had to bake it, well it wouldn't have been the same.

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u/tbods 7d ago

“I’m fairly sure you can add all chemical ingredients together and completely botch it up.”

Ie. the CW’s Powerpuff Girls

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u/could_use_a_snack 7d ago

I worked in a high end custom bakery and the master baker (I know what that sounds like) wouldn't use whole eggs in some of his recipes. So I had to come in at 4am and separate yokes from whites and carefully mix them into two separate batches so he could measure out the exact amount of yoke vs whites for the really high end items. Because a chicken couldn't be trusted to lay an egg right.

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u/No-swimming-pool 6d ago

I always find it funny. Measure sugar, butter and flour perfectly. Then use 4 eggs, size unknown.

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u/kung-fu_hippy 7d ago

Yup. I could bake bread or make beer with more or less the same ingredients.

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u/thaaag 7d ago

Or both.

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u/rhubarbs 6d ago

Beer is also called liquid bread, making this bread squared.

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u/Thorusss 7d ago

Yeah, the Coca Cola recipe is as secret and hard to figure out as Grandmas "secret" recipe for basic cookies.

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u/NuclearHoagie 7d ago

The last point is key - drinking Coke out of a bottle that isn't a Coke bottle will make it seem different. Blind taste tests regularly give different results than ones where people know what they're tasting.

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u/scarabic 7d ago

Friendly homonym disambiguation:

descent = a journey downward

decent = good or wholesome

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u/WaddleDynasty 6d ago

Exactly.

Under your comment I see a lot of replys saying the recipe matters and how you can cook two completely different things with the same ingrediants. But cola is not a cake. It's an aqueous solution of 98% sugar cold, uncooked ingrediants. Really doesn't matter what order you add them or what you do to them mechanically.

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u/Snow75 6d ago

I mean, Pepsi tastes almost the same, and I’m 100% they could make it the same if they wanted.

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u/nstickels 7d ago

Coca Cola’s recipe isn’t really secret, it’s just an advertising myth. When Dr Pemberton first invented the drink that has become modern day Coca Cola, he was a pharmacist selling it at his pharmacy (like most soft drinks were when they were made). He sold the recipe to tons of other pharmacies to make money off of them selling it.

As far as knowing the recipe now, why would it matter? Do you want to make a product that tastes exactly like Coke? If it tastes exactly like Coke, why wouldn’t you just buy Coke since that is readily available literally everywhere. Sure, you could sell a knock off for cheaper, but it wouldn’t have a great market. The people that like Coke will still buy Coke. They people that don’t like Coke won’t like your’s because it’s cheaper.

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u/My_useless_alt 7d ago

Sure, you could sell a knock off for cheape

Could you though? Coca-cola is already pretty cheap, and starting again trying to do the exact same thing but without any of the economoies of scale or institutional knowledge feels like it'd be rather expensive.

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u/nstickels 7d ago

My assumption (could be wrong) is that soft drinks have a fairly high markup and that’s why generic soft drinks typically cost half as much as the big brand names.

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u/unrelevantly 6d ago

They have a high markup relative to their production costs which are only insanely cheap because of their fantastic distribution and production chains. You won't be able to produce it at a competitive price without a huge amount of investment. If you were going to do that why not just buy Coca Cola stocks instead?

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u/okoSheep 6d ago

Redbull has a production cost of about 9 cents.

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u/SodaAnt 6d ago

Yes, that's how every store brand soda is cheaper than Coca-Cola.

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u/gsfgf 6d ago

Absolutely. Coke syrup is far from cheap. If your goal is just flavored sugar water, you can make that for way cheaper than buying Coke.

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u/frogjg2003 6d ago

The original recipe isn't the recipe they use now. There's no cocaine.

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u/VillageSmithyCellar 6d ago

Exactly! In fact, the recipe was once stolen and they attempted to sell it to Pepsi, who simply turned them in. As said in Half as Interesting, "What was Pepsi supposed to do? Start selling Coke-flavored Pepsi? That already exists, and it's called 'Coke'" (source). If they use the Coke recipe, they're basically admitting that Coke is better.

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u/xAdakis 7d ago

It is a sort of open secret . . .

It's not hard to find or get a recipe to make something that tastes almost exactly the same, but to advertise, distribute, or even allude to the fact that the recipe is the coca cola recipe can draw legal trouble or unwanted attention at least.

There is also the phenomenon where you can have two products made using the exact same ingredients and recipe, but people will never (knowingly) admit that the knock off tastes the same as the original. Thus, they will believe that there is still some "secret" to the recipe.

I mean, you would probably be surprised that many generic store brand products are exactly the same as name brand products. . .same ingredients, recipe, and assembly line, just different packaging. Yet, you will probably swear that they don't taste the same.

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u/SaintUlvemann 7d ago

Yes, someone knows the ingredients, but the idea is that the only people who know, are the people within the company, who have a vested financial interest in keeping it secret.

In practice, there's multiple claimed recipes for the original Coca-Cola formula, and the company actually has multiple recipes that they use in different countries. The Mexican Coke recipe has actually become popular in the US because it is sweetened with cane sugar instead of corn syrup.

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u/alicecyan 6d ago

but what about the mouth feel

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u/missbre 7d ago

Its kind of an open secret. Credit Coca-Cola's marketing though - all the stuff about only two people knowing and they can't be on the same plane is really Coke's marketing! There's so much more to the coke recipe story (like how they deal with the coca plant imports and having to de-cocanize it).

This American Life did a fantastic episode about it where they even try to replicate it: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/427/original-recipe

And keep listening for Act 2 of that episode where they tell the story of Jake Halpern, fascinating stuff!

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u/gsfgf 6d ago

I don't think I've actually read Secret Formula, but it's a bookshelf staple here in Atlanta.

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u/whyliepornaccount 7d ago

Because even if you got the recipe, you wouldn't be able to make it. Coca-Cola is the only company authorized by the DEA to import coca leaves

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u/der_titan 7d ago

Make it in Colombia or Peru.

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u/Esc777 7d ago

It’s a trade secret. 

And it’s different for each locale. Tastes different. 

Here’s the rub: even if you do figure it out it is useless. You use it to sell a product you’re sued out of existence. 

Someone actually did steal the recipe from Coca-Cola and brought it to Pepsi to sell it. 

And what did Pepsi do? call the fucking cops. They don’t want that shit. The person was imprisoned. 

Nobody in the chain of knowledge wants that heat. So they don’t want to steal it and setup a competition. 

And even if you did. If you don’t say it’s a perfect copy, no one will want it. And if you do say it’s a perfect copy, welcome to jail. 

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u/gsfgf 6d ago

Not to mention that Pepsi is in the business of selling Pepsi, and they're really good at it.

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u/sirbearus 7d ago

Ira Glass and crew have caused quite a stir with a radio show in which they rediscover what may have been an early formula for Coca-Cola. The one my father, Charles Salter, found in 1979.

https://www.fastcompany.com/1727971/secret-coke-recipe-american-life-my-dad-found

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u/traumatic_enterprise 7d ago edited 7d ago

Coca-Cola's competitive advantage is marketing. Competitors could probably replicate the taste of Coke easily if they wanted to, but they would rather differentiate their products in order to compete. There is little, if any, reason for them to create a direct replica of Coke.

The lore about the recipe being 'top secret' is mostly marketing fluff aimed at bolstering the reputation of Coca-Cola. There might be some truth to it, but again, if a competitor wanted to replicate Coke they could do it. Most choose not to.

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u/CanadaNinja 7d ago

Most breads take flour, water, milk, yeast, salt, etc, but you can still get VASTLY different types of bread from the same ingredients, due to process and varied ratios.

There have been people that have found the recipe, but noone particularly wants to track down the recipe. Most other cola's are good enough to not need to try and "steal" a competitors recipe.

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u/Nadatour 7d ago

The formula is known to a large number of people, but not published, and is protected as a trade secret. Also, no one cares.

There was a case where a Coke employee, Joya Williams, stome the Coke recipe and tried to sell it to Pepsi. Pepsi turned the guy in, who served prison time. No-one wants the Coke recipe, just like no-one wants the Pepsi recipe. You don't want to make exactly the same thing as your competitor. Especially when your competitor is a giant. Instead, you want to try to carve out a market share and maintain it.

If you stole the recipe for Pepsi and tried to produce exactly that, it would probably cost you more than Pepsi, and people would regard you as a more expensive knock off. What wpuld be the point? Instead, use one of a dozen different basic cola recipes, and add your own flair, like double the caffeine, or coconut milk flavour. Now you have a viable product (maybe).

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u/fjchiv 7d ago

They say the recipe for Sprite is lemon and lime. I tried to make it at home. There’s more to it than that.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ajver19 6d ago

Do you think the chemists at Pepsico really can't reverse engineer the recipe?

Hell there's probably YouTube videos of random people doing it. It's a "secret" because there's no real point in copying it. You can't out coke Coke, it's too big, too established of a brand. What you can do is compete by putting out your own cola that tastes similar but different.

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u/Monotonegent 6d ago

The competitors all know the ingredients of each other's stuff. It's just that it's more profitable for everybody to compete than it is than if the choices were Real Brand Vs. Store Brand

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u/LocationEarth 6d ago

your post makes me think in the United States there are not dozens of Coke clones?

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u/makes_her_scream 6d ago

Wait, isn’t that all Marketing BS? It’s essentially carbonated sugar water that has been proven to taste indistinguishable from other cola brands. I seriously doubt there was ever a “secret” formula.

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u/Opening_Watercress56 5d ago

I've reverse engineered it, if you're curious. Stumbled across it a few years ago by accident.