Secret Formula

The story of how a relic of the patent medicine era became a company worth $80 billion is told by Frederick Allen in his history of Coca-Cola. It begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century Atlanta pharmacist who secured the rights to the original formula and then had a hard time removing cocaine from the recipe. In 1919 the banker Ernest Woodruff bought out the Candlers in a high-risk deal and put his son Robert at the head of the company, and Robert Woodruff guided it for the next six decades, making the drink part of American life. Allen, an award-winning reporter, worked with access to the company's archives and to Woodruff's inner circle and private papers.

Mohnish Pabrai calls it a great book for understanding Coca-Cola.