This Is The Real Reason Coke Cans Are Red… And It Has Nothing To Do ...

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

COCA-Cola and the colour red have gone together for as long as anyone can remember.

The original Coke logo was red and white and the tins, which appeared in 1955, followed the same design.

But there’s a fascinating reason behind the scarlet branding that defines the fizzy drink – and it’s all about taxes.

It’s not, as many believe, tied to the famous Coca-Cola ads which saw Santa sporting a red coat for the first time.

It goes back much further than that, to the mid 1890s, when the drink was served out of barrels in US drug stores.

At the time alcohol was taxed while soft drinks were not so the Coca-Cola Company began painting its barrels red so that customs officials and tax officials could tell them apart from barrels of booze.

The colour then became the company’s signature shade and the company even named its first magazine The Red Barrel, in 1924.

Ironically, the soft drink started life as an alcoholic drink which really did contain cocaine.

It was developed by Colonel John Pemberton, who became addicted to morphine after being wounded in the American Civil War and wanted to find an alternative.

Seeing the success of a the French wine coca, a combination of cocaine and alcohol, he came up with his own version which he sold as a tonic for all ills and even claimed it was “a most wonderful invigorator of sexual organs”.

But when his home town of Atlanta  introduced prohibition in 1885 he switched his recipe to a non-alcoholic soda.

Most read in Fabulous

HEAVENS ABOVE

I spent 3 minutes in the afterlife after dying at a club… what really happens

GO HARD

How OnlyFans stars are risking 'exploding penises' from knock-off 'nuclear Viagra'

ABUSE MASTERMIND

Mum committed sick act on her defenceless girl, 5, as she lay unconscious

SHAPE SHOCK

Losing 11st aged me 20 YRS… new tweakment made me look younger than ever

The cocaine remained in the drink until the end of the 19th century.

Many believe that Coca-Cola invented the modern image of Santa as an old man in a red and white suit, but historians believe this image was already common before the 1930s advert.

Recently we revealed that people were covering themselves in Coca-Cola in a weird and dangerous tanning trend.

Channel 4 recently ran a blind taste test on the best-selling brand, and it didn’t come out on top.