Coca-Cola is a beverage with enormous global cultural resonance. It was invented by an Atlanta pharmacist, John S. Pemberton, in 1888, and first bottled in 1894. Originally, Coke was sold as a patent medicine. It has changed from being sold as a medicine to its current status as the world's most popular nonalcoholic beverage, available in more than two hundred countries. The Coca-Cola Corporation was formed in 1902. In 1915, the company adopted the iconic Coke contour bottle.

Coca-Cola can be described as a diluted narcotic (the Coca suggesting its relationship to cocaine) and an inexpensive way that people can reward themselves with a well-known drink, associated in the popular mind with pleasure and modernity. In a book on pop icons, material culture scholar, Craig Gilborn, ...