Wine, Beer & Spirits

Several of the most famous drink brands in the world were started by druggists. Coca-Cola was mixed by an Atlanta pharmacist named John Pemberton in 1886. Pepsi-Cola began a few years later at a drugstore in New Bern, North Carolina, where Caleb Bradham sold it as Brad's Drink before renaming it in 1898.

That connection explains a lot about early drink advertising. Soda was sold as a tonic, good for the nerves or the digestion. 7 Up, launched in 1929, was first sold under a name that ran to several words and included the word lithiated, because it contained lithium citrate. The early ads made claims nobody would print today.

The beer and spirits brands here are older. Arthur Guinness took over a brewery at St. James's Gate in Dublin in 1759 and signed a lease famous for running 9,000 years. Budweiser was introduced in 1876 by Adolphus Busch and Carl Conrad in St. Louis. Campari was created in Italy in the 1860s by Gaspare Campari, and Martini vermouth came out of Turin. Both Italian firms hired poster artists of real talent, and their advertising is still collected for its own sake.

Prohibition is the gap in the middle of the American story. From 1920 to 1933 alcohol could not be legally made or sold, and breweries turned to soft drinks, malt syrup and ice cream to stay alive. Soft drink makers had the field to themselves, and the soda brands grew fast in those years.

Worth noticing in this material is how the women in the ads change. The 1890s Coca-Cola girl is a demure lady in a big hat. By the 1920s she is bobbed and sporty, and by the 1940s she is a pinup. Watch too for the bottles themselves. Coca-Cola's contour bottle dates from 1915, and spotting the older straight-sided bottle is a quick way to date an image.