Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the original Coca-Cola formula and then struggled to get the cocaine out of the recipe. After many tweaks, he finally succeeded in turning a backroom belly-wash into a thriving enterprise. Written with unprecedented access to Coca-Cola's archives, as well as the inner circle and private papers of Woodruff, Allen's captivating business biography stands as the definitive account of what it took to build America's most iconic company and one of the world's greatest business success stories.
"A clear, convincing, anecdotal, often fascinating portrayal not just of Coca-Cola's corporate brilliance, but of how it inveighed its way into the center of American, and world, consciousness."
Financial Times
"[A] highly entertaining history...A juicy look at wheeling-dealing, litigation, global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche."
Publishers Weekly
"At times the book reads like a Russian novel combined with a thriller. It will appeal to the general reader as well as to students of history."
