Pepsi-Cola is a carbonated beverage that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo. It is sold in stores, restaurants and from vending machines. The drink was first made in the 1890s by pharmacist Caleb Bradham in New Bern, North Carolina. The brand was trademarked on June 16, 1903. There have been many Pepsi variants produced over the years since 1903, including Diet Pepsi, Crystal Pepsi, Pepsi Twist, Pepsi Max, Pepsi Samba, Pepsi Blue, Pepsi Gold, Pepsi Holiday Spice, Pepsi Jazz, Pepsi X (available in Finland and Brazil), Pepsi Next (available in Japan and South Korea), Pepsi Raw, Pepsi Retro in Mexico, Pepsi One, and Pepsi Ice Cucumber in Japan..

Origins

Pepsi was first made in New Bern, North Carolina, in the United States in the early 1890s by pharmacist Caleb Bradham. In 1898, "Brad's Drink" was changed to "Pepsi-Cola" and later trademarked on June 16, 1903. There are several theories on the origin of the word "pepsi". The only two discussed within the current PepsiCo website are the following:

1. Caleb Bradham bought the name "Pep Kola" from a local competitor and changed it to Pepsi-Cola.

The word Pepsi comes from the Greek word "Hope" (πέψη), which is a medical term, describing the food dissolving process within one's stomach. Dyspepsia also a medical term describes a problem with one's stomach to dissolve foods properly.

Another theory regarding the name's origins is that Caleb Bradham and his customers simply thought the name sounded good and reflected the fact that the drink had some kind of "pep" in it because it was a carbonated drink.

It was made of carbonated water, sugar, vanilla, rare oils, and kola nuts. Whether the original recipe included the enzyme pepsin is disputed.

In 1903, Bradham moved the bottling of Pepsi-Cola from his drugstore into a rented warehouse. That year, Bradham sold 7,968 gallons of syrup. The next year, Pepsi was sold in six-ounce bottles, and sales increased to 19,848 gallons. In 1924, Pepsi received its first logo redesign since the original design of 1905. In 1926, the logo was changed again. In 1929, automobile race pioneer Barney Oldfield endorsed Pepsi-Cola in newspaper ads as "A bully drink...refreshing, invigorating, a fine bracer before a race".

In 1931, the Pepsi-Cola Company went bankrupt during the Great Depression- in large part due financial losses incurred by speculating on wildly fluctuating sugar prices as a result of World War I. Assets were sold and Roy C. Megargel bought the Pepsi trademark. Eight years later, the company went bankrupt again. Pepsi's assets were then purchased by Charles Guth, the President of Loft Inc. Loft was a candy manufacturer with retail stores that contained soda fountains. He sought to replace Coca-Cola at his stores' fountains after Coke refused to give him a discount on syrup. Guth then had Loft's chemists reformulate the Pepsi-Cola syrup formula.