Pepsi was not always Pepsi. When it first entered the market, the drink was called “Brad’s Drink” — a name that surprises a lot of fans who have only ever known the blue, red and white label.
The drink was created in 1898 by Caleb “Doc” Bradham, a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina. The original name was simply taken from Bradham’s own name, and he marketed his creation as a digestive aid, positioning it against Coca-Cola’s medicinal tonic branding of the time.
The name did not stay that way for long. In 1902 Bradham applied for a trademark and formed the Pepsi-Cola company, having bought the name “Pep Kola” from a local competitor. “Pepsi” itself refers to pepsin, a digestive enzyme — Bradham believed his drink aided digestion the way pepsin does, although pepsin was never actually an ingredient.
So the rebranding was a deliberate move: from a pharmacist’s own-name drink to a product pitched as a digestive remedy. More than a century later, the “Brad’s Drink” origin is the part of the story most Pepsi lovers say they never knew.
