22 Sep Interesting Vaults #1
The Coca Cola Vault in Atlanta, Georgia. United States of America.
As legend has it, the ingredients that go into making Coca Cola are so secret that the only people who knew the formula were not allowed to fly on the same aeroplane together in case the recipe was lost forever!
Seemingly, Coca Cola had a back up plan that involved the formula being kept securely in a Safe Deposit Box in a purpose built vault in their museum located in Atlanta, Georgia. This can be seen in the picture below held by Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent.
Coca-Cola took the decision to move the recipe from the previous custodians Suntrust, as the bank no longer provided them with underwriting services.
The legend of the recipe goes that Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 by Atlanta pharmacist John S. Pemberton. To keep the crucial recipe a secret he did not write it down, and it was only known to a handful of people. However, in 1919 the company needed a bank loan and its then-owner Ernest Woodruff was forced to commit the recipe to paper and put up as collateral.
It was kept in a bank vault in New York until the loan was paid back in 1925, at which point Woodruff deposited it at Trust Company Bank, which later became SunTrust.
The Vault door (pictured below) is located in a cylindrical room, where images of glasses filling with Coca-Cola splash across the walls before lights come on and reveal a giant, metal-encased vault with a keypad and a hand-imprint scanner. A railing keeps visitors several feet away from the vault door. The vault rarely opens, and Coke officials wouldn’t say if the keypad and hand scanner were there for show or were part of the security measures in place to protect the formula.
The Vault door was designed to resemble a Coca-Cola can and pays homage to much of their iconic imagery which is incorporated into the design.