Consumer History | Coca-Cola — The Fountain at Jacobs' Pharmacy, Five Points

People look for the first Coca-Cola inside the World of Coca-Cola or the North Avenue tower.

The first glass was sold here, at Jacobs' Pharmacy on the Five Points corner of Peachtree and Marietta Streets in Atlanta, on 8 May 1886.

John Stith Pemberton had mixed the syrup in a brass kettle and carried a jug down the street. Joseph Jacobs rented the soda fountain to Willis Venable. Venable put carbonated water in the glass instead of still water. The drink cost a nickel. Frank Robinson, Pemberton's bookkeeper, had already written the name in the script that is still on the bottle.

Nine glasses a day was a good year. Pemberton died in 1888 with almost no mention of the drink in his obituary. Asa Candler bought the rights, incorporated The Coca-Cola Company in Georgia in 1892, and turned a fountain tonic into a bottled trade. Jacobs later said selling his share for a glass factory was poor judgment.

The pharmacy is gone. A marker stands at 14 Marietta Street NW, in front of Georgia State University's Andrew Young School. The first sale was a fountain pour in a drugstore, not a bottling plant or a brand museum.