What is life without whimsy? :o
When Coca-Cola started, all they sold was Coke. So of course they named the company that.
The range of other flavors (orange, root beer, etc.) were later additions. Especially when they moved from soda fountains to bottled drinks – it was easy & profitable for the bottler to produce a whole range of flavors with the same equipment, and having a whole range was a selling point for retailers.
Many of the other flavors were originally produced by other companies, which were eventually bought up by Coke or Pepsi.
By gum (or cola), this is the most interesting thread I’ve read in a while. And just a not for the amateurs, but DP is spelled without the period… Dr Pepper.
I think cola is the most popular because it’s the best flavor.
Due to medical reasons, I had to switch to sugar free soda. So, I went with Coke Zero. And due to some job requirements, I needed to to cut out caffeine after 6 pm, so I started drinking diet decaf Coke then. I found that DDC tasted closer to Classic Coke than Diet Coke or Coke Zero.
actually cokes first new flavor was sprite in 1969 and their in house root beer was “ramblin” that you only found in certain fountains (namely mc donalds) and mello yello was thir first attempt at a mt dew knock off
although I’m still sort of sad they bought out barqs tho as barqs had more flavors than root beer and its actually harder to find than before coke owned it
For those of us who prefer diet soft drinks, in most restaurants our only choice is diet Coke or Pepsi, which is unfortunate. A few places have diet Dr Pepper - and if they do, I will usually get that. But sometimes I might want something without caffeine, like a Sprite or root beer, and if I do then I’m SOL. (That’s one reason I like to go to Five Guys - they have a Freestyle machine and I can get myself a diet Barq’s root beer with vanilla!)
Fascinates me how cultures are filled with things that predominate because they’re norms, because we are accustomed to them, grow up on them–and so many people in the culture will feel sure it’s about innate superiority and never consider otherwise.
I think there’s more to it than that. I grew up never drinking soda at all (health conscious parents). In high school, I drank so much Dr Pepper that it became a standing joke. These days I drink a variety of diet (and occasionally non-diet) sodas. But I mainly drink Coke Zero, and in particularly I drink almost exclusively Coke Zero when it’s a beverage accompanying a meal. I like an occasional root beer or diet Dr Pepper or cream soda or orange soda, but most of those work better as a standalone thirst quencher. For beverage-that-matches-food, my far and away first choice is Coke Zero. I also really like Ginger Beer (not ale) in that role, but it’s more expensive, harder to get, and I don’t know if there’s a good zero-calorie Ginger Beer.
So I think the preference for cola over other sodas is at least partly due to qualities of its flavor. Not necessarily that it’s THE BEST in some way, but that it fits a particular role very well.
I think it has to do with the fact that Coca-Cola was a fantasia flavor (a new flavor created by combining flavor ingredients) that was popular enough for many companies to imitate but distinctive enough that no one could duplicate it precisely. It would be hard to make an orange soda your flagship because orange is a relatively simple flavor to produce, so you get many brands of orange soda, but few people with a strong preference for, say, Fanta orange vs Sunkist. Other fantasia flavored, such as Moxie or Dr Pepper, were distinctive and hard to duplicate, but they didn’t originally have the widespread national following that led to many producers chasing the same consumer preferences. Cola, ginger ale, and root beer all had multiple brands with distinctive flavors that led to strong consumer brand preferences, but it was two cola marketers, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola that really took advantage of this and built commercial empires out of it.
Off-topic slightly, but I now live in Maine and plan on attending the
