What We Know as Coca-Cola Had an Earlier “Friar” Version

This sounds like Vin Mariani, a coca extract/wine mixture, which was a favourite of Pope Leo XIII. It must have been good for him! He was the longest-lived reigning Pope in history.

From Aleteia

By Daniel Esparza

A yellowed flyer found in a Florence convent pharmacy describes a 19th-century tonic made from coca leaves and kola nuts. Sound familiar?

Father Manuel Russo, rector of the San Marco convent on Via Cavour in Florence, was sorting through the pharmacy archives when he came across a yellowed promotional flyer he did not recognize. It described an elixir vinoso ricostituente — a restorative wine elixir — made from 10 grams of Bolivian coca leaves and 30 grams of kola nut, blended with wine, and promoted as a tonic against fatigue caused by illness and aging. The flyer is believed to date to the mid-to-late 19th century.

The ingredients were familiar. They are, essentially, the same ones American pharmacist John Stith Pemberton used in 1886 when he created the syrup that eventually became Coca-Cola. Pemberton’s formula — also combining coca leaf extract and kola nuts — used carbonated water instead of wine, after local alcohol laws prevented him from replicating the wine-based version he had originally developed. As The Florentine noted, the discovery “provides a fascinating reminder that Florence’s convent pharmacies were once centers of scientific experimentation as well as spiritual life.”

There is no evidence of a direct link between the Florentine recipe and Pemberton’s invention, and Father Russo is the first to say so. “I don’t want to attract a lawsuit from Coca-Cola or something like that,” he told the Guardian. “Mr Pemberton invented his own recipe, and without alcohol. Plus at that time other people were producing this kind of medicine with coca leaves. It was quite common in Italy and France. The only thing I can say is that San Marco’s pharmacy had its own recipe.”

He is right about the wider context. During the period when Florence served as Italy’s capital, from 1865 to 1871, it was not uncommon for officials and office workers to stop at the San Marco convent during their breaks to sip the tonic. Coca-leaf preparations were a staple of European pharmacy in the second half of the 19th century — the Bolivian leaves reached Italian monasteries via missionaries, long before cocaine was identified as a problem rather than a cure and the leaves were globally banned in 1961. A similar product, Kola Coca, was produced in Valencia, Spain, in 1885.

“Up until Bolivian coca leaves were banned,” Father Russo told Euronews, “because by that point it was understood that cocaine was a problem more than a cure — I would say that it was one of our bestsellers.”

Friars and pharmacies

The history of the pharmacy itself is worth pausing over. San Marco convent was founded in 1436, with the pharmacy opening in 1460 to serve the neighborhood’s poor — a detail entirely consistent with the Dominican tradition of medicine and education in the service of the most vulnerable. The original premises are still intact, including the remains of a crocodile brought from the Nile River which has hung from the ceiling since the 1600s — a common practice in 19th-century European pharmacies to signal access to rare exotic ingredients. Russo also found labels for pure oxygen, cognac, and rectified petroleum spirit among the archives. “The inventory in the pharmacy’s archives is incredible,” he said.

The pharmacy still operates today, though its location moved to a different part of Florence in 1995. The original premises remain on Via Cavour, along with the crocodile, the empty bottles that once held the elixir, and now, the flyer that started the conversation.

As for the connection with Pemberton: Father Russo is keeping his head. The similarities are real, the proof is absent, and the world’s most famous soft drink will remain, for now, an American invention. What the San Marco discovery does confirm is that Dominican friars in Renaissance Florence were running a sophisticated pharmaceutical operation — importing exotic ingredients via missionary networks, treating the poor, and apparently producing a drink energetic enough to fuel a capital city’s bureaucracy through its afternoon slump. Whether or not Coca-Cola owes them anything, they deserve the credit for that.