Florence Monastery Leaflet Describes 19th‑Century Coca‑Kola Elixir

Overview

• This week a Dominican priest at the Antica Farmacia di San Marco in Florence found a mid‑19th‑century advertising leaflet for an “Elixir vinoso ricostituente” that lists 30 grams of colanuts and 10 grams of Bolivian coca leaves steeped in a liter of alcohol.
• The leaflet’s ingredients match elements used decades later in John Pemberton’s French Wine Coca, the alcoholic precursor to Coca‑Cola, which has driven widespread media interest.
• Pater Manuel Russo and multiple historians stress that the find does not prove a direct link to Pemberton in Atlanta because no documentary trail shows the recipe travelled from Florence to the United States.
• Experts note that coca‑based tonics were common in 19th‑century Europe and that missionary networks routinely brought coca and kola to monastery pharmacies, which can explain independent, similar recipes.
• The immediate next steps are scholarly verification and archival study to date and contextualize the leaflet, while the monastery and historians warn against treating ingredient overlap as proof of copying.