32 IN THE SHADOW OF THE DRAGON Coca-Cola and Huiyuan Juice Coca-Cola was one of the first multinational giants to enter the Chinese market, and it did so long before most other countries saw China as a promising opportunity. The soft drink that came to be known as Coke had started its career as a medicinal tonic invented in 1886 by a pharmacist, John Stith Pemberton. It was originally marketed as Pemberton's French Wine Cola and sold in drugstores for 5 cents a glass. Pemberton, who eventually became a morphine addict, sold the formula to several different people, including his own alcoholic son, Charlie. In 1892, Asa Candler, one of the pur- chasers of the original formula, beat off his competitors and founded the Coca-Cola Company. Two years later, the drink began to be sold in bottles. Sales accelerated when Fulton County and Atlanta, Georgia, where Coca-Cola was based, instituted their own prohibition laws against alcoholic beverages. Coke became the opti-