One summer day in 1894, Joe Biedenharn, a candy retailer in Vicksburg, Mississippi, had an idea.

Every day people flocked to his candy store to escape the heat and down a glass of Coca-Cola, a drink that was then less than a decade old. So, Biedenharn thought, why not supply Coca-Cola to residents in outlying areas? He already delivered stoppered bottles of soda water throughout the Vicksburg vicinity; all he had to do was add some Coca-Cola syrup to the carbonated water.

Thus was born the first Coca-Cola bottler

In Vicksburg, more than 35 000 people every year visit a small museum on the premises of the original Biederharn candy store to look over the collection of Coke ephemera as well as a restored soda fountain … In just a few years … bottles [have been dispensed] to 14 000 soda pilgrims. Soda nostalgia is booming, particularly in the South, where many famed soft drinks originated. Analysts credit that to the south's hot climate as well as its strong religious culture which frowned upon harder beverages.

These new-old enterprises seek to preserve the aspects of soft drinks that disappeared with the advancement of modernity: drug store soda fountains (killed off by home refrigeration and declining profit margins); soda bottles (overtaken by cheaper aluminium and plastic containers); and the once-vast array of regional brands and unusual flavours (squeezed out by the ever-growing domination of Coke and Pepsi).

- The Economist, 3 April 1999, pp 81-2