Coca-Cola is the world's best known brand and perhaps the most quintessentially American one: a beverage with no nutritional value, sold variously as a remedy, a tonic and a refreshment. The story of Coca-Cola is also a tale of carbonization, soda fountain shops, dynastic bottling businesses, and ultimately, globalisation and billion-dollar promotional campaigns. New York reporter Constance L. Hays examines the 116 year history of Coca-Cola by describing the charismatic, driven men who, generation after generation, made Coke the world's best known brand: the Cuban exile who worked his way up the company to become Chief Executive is just one of the senior managers whose grip on the company led it down extraordinary paths. Starting with its creation after the Civil War and continuing with its dominion of the domestic and world-wide soft drink business, the story of Coca-cola is one of opportunity, hope, teamwork and love as well as salesmanship, hubris, ambition and greed.