Fact check: Did Coca-Cola ever contain cocaine?

New Delhi, Apr 29: After striking a $44-billion deal to buy social media company Twitter, the world's richest man Elon Musk is on a tweeting spree on the microblogging site.

Recently, Musk had tweeted that he would be buying Coca-Cola next to "put cocaine back in". The tweet has gone viral, like all his other posts, and both #CocaCola and #cocaine are now trending.

Did Coca-Cola ever have cocaine in it?

Yes, the original recipe for Coca-Cola contained cocaine.

Coca-Cola's history has been well-documented. The drink was invented in 1885 by John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, who made the original formula in his backyard.

Pemberton's recipe contained cocaine in the form of an extract of the coca leaf, which inspired the "Coca" part of the beverage's name. The "Cola" comes from the kola nut (which contains caffeine, another stimulant).

When Coca-Cola was invented, cocaine was legal and a common ingredient in medicines. People thought it was safe to use in small amounts.

But the drug was eliminated from the recipe just after the turn of the century. The cocaine amount in Coca-Cola was also reduced over time, and the drink was made cocaine-free by 1929. It was the Prohibition Era in the US then.

We rate the claim that the first bottle of Coca-Cola contained 3.5 grams of cocaine as MISSING CONTEXT because without additional information it could be misleading. While Coca-Cola did once contain some cocaine, it's very unlikely the drink contained that much.

The company website still maintains "Coca-Cola does not contain cocaine or any other harmful substance, and cocaine has never been an added ingredient in Coca‑Cola".