Today Is...The First Advertisement For Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has had four lives, the first one as a drug infused wine, then a drug infused medicine, then again as a drug infused soft drink and then a tooth rotting soft drink minus the hard drugs.
America in the 1860's was an era of Cowboys, Indians, pioneers, outlaws and guns but most importantly the Civil war and John Pemberton was a Chemist from Atlanta who ended up fighting on the Confederates side and as luck would have it, he was slashed with a sword during a cavalry battle with the Union Calvary. 
Being slashed with a sword may not sound all that lucky but as he was Chemist, he had access to the pain killer morphine and quickly became addicted so he went looking for a cure for this addiction and began to experiment with safer painkillers and came up with mixing booze and coca leaves and kola nuts, aka cocaine, and came up with Pemberton's French Wine Coca.
If you're thinking to yourself that combining a stimulant and a depressant into one concoction isn't the greatest of ideas then you are probably right but not long afterwards a local prohibition law was enacted and alcohol was banned.
For most people whose living was alcohol related, this would have spelt disaster but for Pemberton it was a second massive stroke of luck because he replaced the alcohol with carbonated water, kept the cocaine ingredients and sweetened it with obscene amounts of sugar and advertised it as a medicine which could cure headaches, relieve exhaustion, impotence and calm nerves, calling it Coca-Kola as reference to the two main ingredients.
In 1929 the cocaine element was removed altogether and they marketed it purely as a soft drink called Coca-Cola, the name change an attempt to obscure the drinks druggy origins but was great news for Dentists and Tooth Fairies everywhere and even the Nazi's got something out of it also.  
Coca-Cola played both sides during World War Two, supported the American troops but also making sure the Nazi's never got thirsty either. After the Coca-Cola factories ran out of syrup in Germany due to wartime restrictions, they invented a new drink just for the Nazis and called it Fanta. Thirsty work killing all those millions so nice of Coca-Cola to keep the Germans spirits up.