The Dilemma: You’re at a restaurant. You’ve specifically asked for a Coke when you get handed a Pepsi, or vice versa. You tell the waiter what you requested, and he gives you the “What’s the difference?” shrug. Perhaps it’s time you laid it on him.

People You Can Impress: “Impressed” probably doesn’t accurately reflect the aforementioned waiter’s likely response.

The Quick Trick: If you drink them side by side, Pepsi is the sweeter of the two (which is why people tend to prefer Pepsi in the Pepsi Challenge).

The Explanation:
Although the fantastic ad campaigns run by both companies would have you think otherwise, the soft drinks’ similarities are pretty striking. For starters, Pepsi and Coke were both the brainchildren of Southern pharmacists. Coca-Cola was invented by Atlantan Dr. John Pemberton in 1886. And yes, there was originally a concentration of cocaine in the soda, but it was reduced to a tiny amount (1/400th of a grain per ounce) by 1902 and removed altogether by 1930. Th e Coca-Cola Company changed hands a few times, and after Prohibition Coca-Cola was sold to the Woodruff family for $25 million.

Pepsi, on the other hand, was born a few years after Coke. In 1893, pharmacist Caleb Bradham began experimenting withvarious drink mixtures in New Bern, N.C. His 1898 concoction, then known by the creative name “Brad’s Drink,” became an overnight success, and “Doc” Bradham began selling his “Exhilarating, Invigorating, Digestion Aiding” syrup by the gallon (7,968 of them for soda fountains in his first year). In the 1940s, Pepsi, as the drink came to be known, adopted a red, white, and blue logo to support America’s war effort (or to profit from a hollow, contrived gesture of patriotism—if you’re a Coke drinker).

While both drinks contain vanilla, rare oils, carbonated water, kola nut extracts, and the widely beloved high-fructose corn syrup, Coca-Cola maintains a secret ingredient: the mysterious “7X.” The formula for the soft drink (including 7X) is kept in a bank vault in Atlanta, and employees who know the secret formula sign nondisclosure agreements before they get to peek at the recipe. In fact, the secret of 7X is so well kept that Coke was for a time forced to abandon the market in India after a law there required that all trade-secret information be disclosed to the government. The law was changed in 1991, and ever since, Coke and Pepsi have been vying for the lion’s share of the Indian market.

Soda Myths
1. Neither Coke nor Pepsi will kill you if combined with Pop Rocks.
2. A tooth left in a glass of cola will not dissolve overnight. Nor will a penny, for that matter. And while anything with sugar and acid—orange juice, for instance—will eventually dissolve teeth, it takes quite a while.