Bids for the 1996 Summer Olympics for the Games (a promise that was not carried out eventually, as Athens went on to host the 2004 Summer Olympics). Coca-Cola executives, however, had feared that a successful Atlanta bid would hurt their business. While they produced commemorative pins of the six candidate cities, with the intent of handing out the winning city's pins to IOC delegates, this backfired as others alleged that Coca-Cola had predicted which city had won; indeed sales of the beverage in Greece dropped for the next few years. A year later, an article appeared in the German periodical "Der Spiegel" accusing the Atlanta Committee
Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company Plant second level. The building was built in 1891, and was from 1900-01 home to the Dixi Coca-Cola Bottling Company, established by Benjamin Franklin Thomas and Joseph Brown Whitehead in 1899 as the exclusive bottler of Coca-Cola for a large part of the United States. Of ten sites definitively established with the early history of Coca-Cola (which was first distributed as a fountain drink from facilities in the city in 1887), it is the only one still standing. Since 1966, it has served as Georgia State University's Baptist Student Center. It had deteriorated in condition by the 1970s, including some loss