John Pemberton was wounded by a saber to the chest while fighting for the Confederacy in the US Civil War. His wounds left him with a debilitating morphine habit, so the experienced botanist and medicine maker set to work finding a cure for his addiction. He mixed coca leaves (the plant used for cocaine), wine, and kola nuts to create Pemberton’s French Wine Cola, essentially trading one addiction for two.

When prohibition hit his Georgia bottling plant in 1886, Pemberton replaced the alcohol content with a sugary, sweet syrup, and rebranded to Coca-Cola. He died of stomach cancer two years later, nearly penniless, leaving the company to his only son. The coca was eventually replaced with caffeine, and as prohibition expanded across the nation in the 1920s, bartenders began stocking it in mass quantities, turning Coca-Cola into a household name.