Bids for the 1996 Summer Olympics "political instability, potential security problems, air pollution, traffic congestion and the fact that it would have to spend about $3 billion to improve its infrastructure of airports, roads, rail lines and other amenities". Allegations were quick to emerge in the Greek and Australian media that Atlanta had won the Games due to a conspiracy organized by global beverage company Coca-Cola, a longtime sponsor of the Olympic Games headquartered in Atlanta. An Athenian daily newspaper declared the "Olympic flame will not be lit with oil, but with Coca-Cola", while the Athens bid chair said that the city would never again bid
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