Fanta is one of the world’s most popular soft drinks. It is easily recognized by its bright colors and bold advertisements. The brand presents itself as multicultural and fun, and lures consumers with the promise of fresh flavors. But did you know that the first bottle of Fanta was made from food waste? Or that in Nazi Germany invented?
In his book “For God, Country and Coca-Cola”, Mark Pendergrast tells how Fanta was born. It all started in 1923 when Robert Woodruff was elected president of the Coca-Cola Company. He had big dreams for the brand and its global expansion. In previous years, Coca-Cola’s international production dropped slightly after the French cola producers’ accidental bad bottling practices caused consumers of the product to fall ill.
In response to the unpleasant incident, under Woodruff’s direction, the company created the Foreign Division, which later became known as The Coca-Cola Export Corporation. This established official bottling plants in over 27 countries and allowed Coca-Cola to oversee them all. While the flavoring was provided by Coca-Cola, each country provided its own bottling equipment and sugar for its own production. This started a global boom. Coca-Cola sponsored the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, where the Coca-Cola logo was recognized around the world, appearing on everything from hats and billboards to the walls of the city’s streets. Coca-Cola quickly became associated with the ideal American life and became known internationally as a patriotic American icon.
Coca-Cola spread throughout Europe, so it also reached Germany. The head of the German subsidiary was an American named Ray Rivington Powers. He was a charismatic personality and an excellent dealmaker who often promised potential customers that they would get brutally rich if they bought Coke. Powers used this tactic to increase sales from 6,000 cases a year to 100,000.
But despite Powers’ shrewd sales techniques, he didn’t care about accounting details, and the company’s unpaid bills often piled up. As a result, the German subsidiary was in a financial crisis. In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power and the rule of the Third Reich began, which meant a new era for both Germany and Coca-Cola.
The company was joined by Max Keith, a man of German origin who was unwaveringly loyal to Coca-Cola. Often described as imposing and a born leader, Keith was determined to save the subsidiary. With the German economy booming, he took measures to market the drink to his country’s hard-working people. At the time, that meant restoring Coca-Cola’s reputation—not as an American icon, but as a brand beloved by the German population.
Like the Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were a perfect marketing opportunity for Coca-Cola. Like most brands active in Germany at this time, this one appeared alongside banners decorated with swastikas. After that, the Coca-Cola logo was seen at various German sports competitions, and later even on trucks at Hitler Youth rallies.
Even though Keith never actually joined the Nazi Party himself, he was willing to work with him to save the company.
As the war escalated, so did economic tensions. The German government began to punish foreign companies. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and declared war on Europe, Keith feared that his American-owned business would be seized by the government.
Then the war entered a new phase. The United States officially entered World War II and declared Germany an enemy. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917, he imposed a total embargo against the Axis powers. Woodruff and Keith were eventually forced to cut ties, and Keith’s steady flow of Coca-Cola syrup stopped as well.
The idea came as a bolt from the blue
The multinational companies operating in Germany at the time could not produce products, but Keith was determined not to fall in line. He decided to create an exclusively German soft drink.
Keith worked with chemists to create a soft drink that vaguely resembled cola, was caffeinated, and had an unidentifiable flavor mix. But instead of being made with the secret 7X Coke flavor, this product was made from leftovers from other food companies, mostly leftovers from farmers markets. This was usually fruit pulp, such as apples from pressing cider and whey. The resulting liquid was a translucent beige color that more closely resembled today’s ginger beer. Keith asked his sales team to name the drink. This eventually became Fanta.
At this time, Fanta was all he could sustain the company with. Luckily for Keith, there were few soft drink alternatives available in Germany, so Fanta’s popularity exploded. Its reputation allowed it to bypass the sugar quota, making it the sweetest drink on the market. Sales gradually increased as it became practically a staple food in households.
Keith then used his existing connections to produce the product at all of Coca-Cola’s plants in Germany. This allowed him to spread Fanta throughout Europe and save other subsidiaries from closure. The German branch sold about 3 million cases of the drink before the end of the war.
And when the Allies finally entered the German factories, Fanta production stopped and Keith turned over the profits from his creation to Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta.
The version of the drink we know today gradually developed with the Fanta Orange brand name introduced in Italy in 1955. This new drink was bright orange in color and made with local citrus ingredients, as opposed to food industry scraps. Coca-Cola thus continued to produce a profitable product while distancing itself from associations with the former Third Reich.
Coca-Cola launched a commercial celebrating Fanta’s 75th anniversary in 2015. The company received many criticisms, as if it referred to the “good old days” in Germany. In response, Coca-Cola removed the video and issued an official apology. When asked to comment on the incident, a representative said: “The 75-year-old brand had no connection to Hitler or the Nazi party.”
The Birth of Fanta is an instructive tale of what happens when necessity meets moral ambiguity. What was once a concoction made from scraps in wartime Germany became a carbonated, brightly colored soft drink in Italy and is now an internationally popular drink.