John Pemberton Fulton County enacted temperance legislation, Pemberton had to produce a non-alcoholic alternative to his French Wine Coca. Pemberton relied on Atlanta drugstore owner-proprietor Willis E. Venable to test, and help him perfect, the recipe for the beverage, which he formulated by trial and error. With Venable's assistance, Pemberton worked out a set of directions for its preparation. He blended the base syrup with carbonated water by accident when trying to make another glassful of the beverage. Pemberton decided then to sell this as a fountain drink rather than a medicine. Frank Mason Robinson came up with the name "Coca-Cola" for
John Pemberton (physician) John Pemberton (physician) Professor John Pemberton FRCP (1912-2010) was a British epidemiologist. Pemberton was born on 18 November 1912, in Romford, Essex, to Marie Lottie (née Talbot) and Augustus Charles Pemberton, the latter being a steward at Christ's Hospital, Horsham. He studied at Christ's Hospital and then at University College London, where he qualified in medicine in 1936, subsequently working at University College Hospital and then Miller General Hospital. He was excused military service during World War II, as he had tuberculosis. In 1958 he became Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine at Queen's University Belfast, retiring in 1976 and