Coke cost a nickel for 70 years.

Boys drinking Coca-Cola, 1930s

A lot changed between the 1880s and 1950s — empires fell, airplanes took to the sky, and two world wars were fought. But one thing stayed the same: the price of Coca-Cola. A bottle of Coke cost a nickel in 1886, and so did a bottle of Coke in 1959. That’s largely because the Coca-Cola company itself wasn’t the one selling its flagship product. The soft drink was originally served exclusively at soda fountains until two lawyers named Benjamin F. Thomas and Joseph B. Whitehead secured the right to bottle coke on a large scale.

Since the deal between Coca-Cola and the bottlers fixed the price of syrup at a low cost, Coca-Cola was only able to make money through a large volume of sales. The company blanketed the country in ads reading, “Drink Coca-Cola, 5¢,” which forced bottlers to maintain the low price and kept sales high.

Between that marketing campaign and the fact that vending machines selling Coke were only equipped to accept nickels, the price stayed the same until inflation increased it by a penny in the 1940s, with the last nickel Coke being sold in 1959. Though cans and plastic bottles are now far more common, you can still find 24 bottles of Coke for about $35.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

Coca-Cola was initially marketed as a “brain tonic.”

There’s a good chance that the first customers to buy Coca-Cola in 1886 were looking for more than just a refreshing drink. The now-ubiquitous soft drink created by John Stith Pemberton was initially marketed as an “intellectual beverage” that contained “the valuable TONIC and NERVE STIMULANT properties of the Coca plant and Cola (or Kola) nuts.” The drink was initially advertised as “the ideal brain tonic for discriminating people.” This early marketing promised that Coke was a “cure for all nervous conditions” that “relieves fatigue.”

This was part of an ongoing trend at the time: patent medicines, which were dubious concoctions brewed and sold by people claiming to have medical knowledge. Most of these products had no such benefits, while others were actively harmful. And while Coke didn’t live up to its own medicinal claims — especially since it did indeed include small amounts of cocaine until 1904 — its continued popularity shows that it is at least refreshing.