There is little doubt that a serving of Coca-Cola once contained a significant shot of cocaine. In fact, the psychoactive drug extracted from the coca leaf remained a part of the drink's recipe until 1929, fully 15 years after cocaine was outlawed in the United States.

You wouldn't know this to visit the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, GA where the company is headquartered though. There is no mention of the narcotic among the museum displays, and the docents, when asked, will flatly deny cocaine's connection to the drink. They dismiss the idea as a myth, an urban legend. But the drink was invented by a pharmacist in 1886, a time when cocaine was commonly mixed into everything from (supposed) medicinal elixirs to wine. Not to mention that fact that the plant from which the drug is derived is literally half the name of the drink.
The reason this matters (at least to me) is that the cocaine component of Coca-Cola's story is easily its most compelling. I can't understand why they would hide that element of their history and, in the face of overwhelming evidence, deny it even existed? That's what makes the company's past interesting. That salacious bit of backstory is what separates them from every other drier-than-dirt corporate biography.

Anyway, I'm diabetic, and I don't give a shit about Coca-Cola other than the lesson to be learned here: Embrace your strange; it's the part of you the people who matter most are drawn to.