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
Charles Reece Pemberton after his return, on 3 March 1840, at the house of his younger brother, William Dobson Pemberton, on Ludgate Hill, Birmingham. Pemberton was buried at Key Hill Cemetery, and the Birmingham Mechanics' Institute, of which George Holyoake was secretary, placed a memorial, with an epitaph by William Johnson Fox, over his grave. Ebenezer Elliott, known as the "corn law rhymer", wrote some verses on him entitled "Poor Charles". He directed that all his manuscripts, except three plays, should be destroyed. "The Life and Literary Remains of Charles Reece Pemberton" (1843), edited by John Fowler, with memoir by William Johnson Fox,