Caleb Bradham and the Invention of Brad’s Drink: The Pepsi Story

Before Pepsi was a billion-dollar global brand. Before the Cola Wars. Before Michael Jackson, Super Bowl halftime shows, and blind taste tests — there was a pharmacist in a small North Carolina town, mixing something interesting behind his soda counter and wondering if his customers might like it.

They did.

The story of how Pepsi-Cola was invented in New Bern, North Carolina is one of American business history’s more charming origin stories — part entrepreneurial ambition, part small-town ingenuity, and part cautionary tale about what happens when a boom goes badly wrong. It involves a modest drugstore, a modest man, a formula that turned out to be anything but modest, and a bankruptcy that should have ended everything.

It didn’t.

Who Was Caleb Bradham?

Caleb Davis Bradham was born in 1867 in Chinquapin, North Carolina, a small community in Duplin County. He was, by most accounts, the kind of restlessly capable person who couldn’t quite settle on a single thing — which is how you end up starting medical school, running out of money, pivoting to teaching, and then pivoting again to pharmacy.

By 1893, Bradham had opened a drugstore on the corner of Middle and Pollock Streets in New Bern. The pharmacy was successful, but it was the soda fountain inside it that would change everything.

Soda fountains were the coffee shops of the late 19th century — gathering places where people came not just for medicine but for refreshment, conversation, and something sweet to drink. Bradham was good at the social side of the business. He was known as a friendly, community-minded presence, and he liked to experiment with flavor combinations behind his counter, offering customers house-made drinks alongside the standard carbonated water and syrups of the day.

One of those experiments, developed sometime around 1893, turned out to be worth more than everything else in the store combined.

What Was “Brad’s Drink”?

The formula Bradham developed — originally called “Brad’s Drink” by the regulars who ordered it — was built around a combination of carbonated water, sugar, caramel, kola nut extract, lemon oil, and a blend of other natural additives that Bradham kept proprietary. Kola nuts, sourced from West Africa, were a popular ingredient in patent medicines and refreshment drinks of the era — they contain caffeine and were believed to aid digestion and boost energy.

The drink Bradham created was specifically marketed on these functional benefits. It wasn’t just a soda. It was positioned as a digestive aid, an energizing tonic, and a pleasant thing to drink — which made it, by the standards of 1890s marketing, practically a miracle beverage.

Customers agreed. Brad’s Drink became genuinely popular at the fountain, with repeat customers seeking it out specifically. By 1898, Bradham had developed the formula to a point where he was confident enough to take the next step.

He renamed it.

The Birth of Pepsi-Cola: 1898

On August 28, 1898, Caleb Bradham officially renamed his creation Pepsi-Cola. The name was a deliberate combination of two of the drink’s key selling points: “pepsin,” the digestive enzyme the drink was meant to emulate, and “kola,” from the kola nut that provided its characteristic kick.

The branding was sharp for the era. The hyphenated name was catchy, memorable, and communicated function — exactly what late-19th-century consumers wanted from a beverage that straddled the line between refreshment and tonic.

In 1902, Bradham began selling the syrup to other soda fountains, formalizing what had been a casual local operation. The demand was real and growing. On June 16, 1903, he incorporated the Pepsi-Cola Company, trademarked the formula, and began building what he intended to be a lasting enterprise.

For the next several years, it worked.

The Rise: Pepsi Finds Its Footing

Through the early 1900s, the Pepsi-Cola Company expanded steadily. Bradham secured bottling franchises across the Southeast, invested in advertising — including early automobile-painted signs and newspaper campaigns — and built the kind of distribution infrastructure that allowed the drink to move beyond New Bern’s soda fountains and into bottles that could travel.

By 1910, Pepsi had franchise operations in 24 states. The company employed hundreds of people and had generated significant revenue. Caleb Bradham had gone from a small-town pharmacist tinkering with flavor combinations to the head of a regional beverage company with genuine national ambitions.

It was, by any measure, a remarkable 15-year run from basement experiment to multi-state operation.

Then World War One happened.

The Fall: Sugar, Speculation, and Bankruptcy

The collapse of Caleb Bradham’s Pepsi-Cola Company is, depending on your perspective, either a story of bad luck or a cautionary tale about the dangers of speculative optimism. Probably both.

The problem was sugar.

During World War One, sugar prices spiked dramatically as global supply chains were disrupted by the conflict. As the war ended, Bradham — anticipating that the tight supply and high prices would continue — bought large quantities of sugar at peak prices, betting on a market that was about to go in the opposite direction.

The price of sugar collapsed in 1920. Bradham was left holding massive sugar inventory purchased at prices that now bore no relationship to market value. The losses were catastrophic.

In 1922, Caleb Bradham declared bankruptcy. The Pepsi-Cola Company, the formula, the trademark, and the brand were sold to pay creditors.

Bradham himself returned to what he knew. He went back to pharmacy, operating a drugstore in New Bern until his death in 1934. He never profited from the eventual global success of the brand he had created.

After Bradham: Pepsi’s Road Back

The story of Pepsi-Cola after Bradham is its own saga — one involving multiple bankruptcies, a series of ownership changes, and a long period of being definitively second to Coca-Cola before mounting the brand rivalry that would define soft drink marketing for decades.

A few key moments in the post-Bradham era worth knowing:

1931: Roy Megargel attempts to revive Pepsi, fails, and sells the company to candy manufacturer Charles Guth, who relocates operations to New York. Guth reformulates the drink and rebrands it aggressively.

1934: Pepsi begins selling 12-ounce bottles for a nickel — the same price as Coca-Cola’s 6-ounce bottle. The “twice as much for a nickel” campaign is one of the most effective value-proposition marketing moves in consumer goods history, and it gives Pepsi its first genuine foothold against its dominant rival.

1964: Diet Pepsi launches, pioneering the diet soda category.

1975: The Pepsi Challenge blind taste test campaign becomes a cultural phenomenon, directly attacking Coke’s dominance and igniting the Cola Wars in earnest.

1984: Michael Jackson signs with Pepsi in a $5 million deal — the largest celebrity endorsement in history at the time — cementing Pepsi’s cultural relevance for a generation.

None of it would have existed without a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina, experimenting at his soda counter sometime in 1893.

Visiting the Birthplace of Pepsi in New Bern Today

The corner of Middle and Pollock Streets — where Bradham’s drugstore once stood — has been restored as a small museum and Pepsi memorabilia shop, operated by the New Bern Historical Society. The space is free to visit, takes about 20 to 30 minutes to explore properly, and is one of those genuinely surprising detours that turns a good day trip into a great one.

The gift shop carries vintage-style Pepsi collectibles, New Bern-specific memorabilia, and a solid selection of items that make for far more interesting souvenirs than anything you’ll find at a highway rest stop.

It fits naturally into a full day in New Bern — ideally sandwiched between a morning at the Tryon Palace Gardens and an afternoon working through the historic district and waterfront. If you’re building a New Bern itinerary, pencil this in. It takes almost no time and delivers an outsized amount of “I didn’t know that” energy.

Location: 256 Middle Street, New Bern, NC 28560 Admission: Free Hours: Check with the New Bern Historical Society for current hours, as they vary seasonally.

Why Caleb Bradham’s Story Still Matters

Caleb Bradham didn’t get to see what Pepsi became. He died in 1934, 12 years after bankruptcy and decades before the brand would become one of the most recognized in the world. By the time the Cola Wars were being fought in television commercials and grocery store aisles, the man who started it all was long gone.

But his story endures for a reason that goes beyond the soda. It’s a story about the mechanics of American entrepreneurship — the way ideas move from curiosity to experiment to product to company — and about the gap between the person who invents something and the people who eventually profit from it.

It’s also, more simply, a reminder that some of history’s most consequential ideas started in small rooms, in small towns, by people who were mostly just trying to make something people liked.

Bradham did that. Whatever happened after, that part was entirely his.

Plan Your Visit to New Bern

The Pepsi birthplace is just one stop in a city that rewards curiosity at every turn. Start your day at Tryon Palace for a deep dive into colonial history, explore the historic district and waterfront in the afternoon, and fuel the whole day with a stop at one of the best restaurants New Bern has to offer.

New Bern is roughly 90 minutes from Raleigh, two hours from Wilmington, and 2.5 hours from Charlotte. For current visitor information, maps, and events, visit visitnewbern.com.

Exploring New Bern? Begin with our complete guide to the city’s most iconic landmark: Living Like a Governor: A Visitor’s Guide to the Tryon Palace Gardens

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