John Pemberton John Pemberton John Stith Pemberton ( – ) was an American pharmacist whom is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. In May 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later become world-famous as Coca-Cola, but sold his rights to the drink shortly before his death. Pemberton was born on , in Knoxville, Georgia, and spent most of his childhood in Rome, Georgia. His parents were James C. Pemberton and Martha L. Gant. He entered the Reform Medical College of Georgia in Macon, Georgia, and in 1850, at the age of nineteen, he earned his medical
John Pemberton degree. His main talent was chemistry. Shortly thereafter, he met Ann Eliza Clifford Lewis of Columbus, Georgia, known to her friends as "Cliff", who had been a student at the Wesleyan College in Macon. They were married in Columbus in 1853. Their only child, Charles Ney Pemberton, was born in 1854. They lived in a Victorian cottage, the Pemberton House in Columbus, a home of historic significance which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 28, 1971. After initially practicing some medicine and surgery, Dr. Pemberton opened a drug store in Columbus. During the American Civil