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
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,