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Asa Candler was born on December 10th, 1851. As a young man he decided not to go to college. In 1888 Asa Candler bought Coca-Cola for $2 300. He changed the formula several times to improve taste, improve shelf life and insure he had a unique product, because several people had known Pemperton's original formula. He removed cocaine totally from Coca-Cola, when it became clear that cocaine was an addictive drug. But the people, who drank it, didn't know that and so they thought that Coca-Cola is something mysterious, and that they do something against the law. Coca-Cola profited from their believing. He gave the name 7X to the formula.
In 1904 Coca-Cola became so successful that Asa Candler built a skyscraper, and fixed a photo of himself and a bottle of Coca-Cola into its foundation. In 1916 Asa was elected Mayor of Atlanta. By 1917, Coca-Cola was being attacked on several fonts. The federal Government reasoned that Coca-Cola had to be breaking the 1906 Pure Food & Drug Laws by either containing cocaine. Court testimony revealed that Coca-Cola was now flavoured with a decocanized coca leaf.
It is remarkable that when Asa Candler was approached in 1917, by two New York Lawyers representing a hidden syndicate, with an offer to purchase Coca-Cola for $ 25 million he turned them down. A couple of month after turning down the offer to sell Coca-Cola, on Christmas Day 1917, he decided to give the Coca Cola Company to his children. Asa Candler's oldest son Howard took full control over Coca-Cola, and his brothers and sisters took seats on the board. But in 1919 they sold the company to Ernest Woodruff. He was universally despised as a corporate raider, and it is also probable that Woodruff was responsible for the earlier 1917 offer (§ 25 million). Asa was not told about the sale of the company by even one of his children- he read about it in the paper- To a man that family meant everything to, this hurt him deeply. Asa Candler lived for another ten years.
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