In May 1886, a struggling Atlanta chemist mixed a new syrup with soda water and sold it for five cents a glass. In its first year it sold about nine drinks a day, and its inventor died two years later. Today the company behind it is worth about 400 billion dollars and its drinks are served about 2.2 billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories.

This animated documentary follows how it really happened, and why the famous "five-dollar formula" is a myth: the formula changed hands for about 2,300 dollars, and the right to bottle it across most of America went for one dollar. From John Pemberton's wartime wound and Asa Candler's free-drink coupons, to the one-dollar bottling deal that created a franchise system, the 1915 bottle, Robert Woodruff's wartime promise of a bottle for five cents and the 64 plants that followed the troops, the cola wars with Pepsi, the New Coke disaster of 1985, and the decision to leave India in 1977 and come back in 1993. It also looks fairly at the criticism the company faces over sugar, water, labour allegations and plastic, and ends with how the business works today.

Animated relief maps show the bottling franchise spreading across the United States, wartime plants following the army, and the markets the company left and re-entered. Every figure is fact-checked; real people appear as stylised painted illustrations, and no real logos are shown.

Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:06 The Chemist's Cure 2:36 A Secret for Sale 4:05 The One-Dollar Deal 6:17 Every Man in Uniform 8:03 The Cola Wars 10:10 Leaving India 11:40 The Price of Everywhere 13:07 The Real Formula

Includes burned-in English subtitles.

Then To Tomorrow: the stories behind the companies that shaped the world. Next: McDonald's, from a small burger restaurant to a global fast-food empire.