The Coca-Cola Company "Coca-Cola" visitor centers in Israel, Belgium and Turkey. The Coca-Cola Company The Coca-Cola Company is an American corporation, and manufacturer, retailer, and marketer of nonalcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups. The company is best known for its flagship product Coca-Cola, invented in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta, Georgia. The Coca-Cola formula and brand were bought in 1894 by Asa Griggs Candler (December 30, 1851 – March 12, 1929), who incorporated The Coca-Cola Company. The company—headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, but incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware—has operated a franchised distribution system since 1889: the Company only produces syrup concentrate, which is
Coca-Cola removed. After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using "spent" leaves – the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with trace levels of cocaine. Since then, Coca-Cola uses a cocaine-free coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey. In the United States, the Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant, which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca-Cola, the Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells