11 Things You Might Not Know About Dr Pepper

You already know that Dr Pepper has a unique, spicy flavor, but did you know its corporate history is just as crisp and interesting?

1. IT'S GOT TEXAS ROOTS.

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Like many beloved soft drinks, Dr Pepper was the product of experimentation in a pharmacy. Charles Alderton, a pharmacist at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas, enjoyed experimenting with the flavored syrups at the shop’s soda fountain. Instead of just accepting the standard fruit flavors available at the time, in 1885 Alderton mixed and matched flavorings until he had crafted a unique drink that customers loved. 

2. THERE MAY HAVE BEEN AN ACTUAL DR. PEPPER.

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Once Alderton perfected his new concoction, it needed a name. Patrons originally referred to the drink as “a Waco,” but Alderton’s boss, Wade Morrison, thought the elixir needed a catchier name. Morrison dubbed the drink Dr. Pepper in a nod to a Dr. Charles T. Pepper who he claimed had been a colleague in his younger days in Rural Retreat, Virginia. In one telling of this story, Morrison had left Virginia for Texas after a love affair with Dr. Pepper’s daughter went flat, but signs point to this romantic origin tale being mostly urban legend. 

3. THE TEXAS SODA TOOK THE NATIONAL STAGE AT THE 1904 WORLD'S FAIR. 

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Texas’s favorite soda fizzed its way into the national consciousness at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. As the Dr Pepper Museum notes, the drink joined the ice cream cone, the hamburger, and the hot dog in making their first big splashes at the event. 

4. LEGALLY, IT'S NOT A COLA.

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For much of Dr Pepper’s history, the drink was a regional delicacy confined to the South and Southwest. Coca-Cola and Pepsi had used their head starts on Dr Pepper to build nationwide networks of independent bottlers who had exclusive franchise contracts to turn their respective syrups into colas. Dr Pepper simply couldn’t crack into new markets with the deck stacked so squarely against it.

That all changed in 1963. A federal court ruled that Dr Pepper’s unique flavor kept it from being a “cola product,” which meant that bottlers were free to distribute Dr Pepper without running afoul of their exclusive deals with Coca-Cola and Pepsi. By the end of the decade, Dr Pepper was available from coast to coast. 

5. COCO-COLA DIDN'T TAKE THIS EXPANSION LIGHTLY.

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A terrific 1975 D Magazine profile of Woodrow Wilson “Foots” Clements, the executive who took Dr Pepper national, chronicles Coca-Cola’s response to the upstart’s growth. In June 1972, Coca-Cola announced Mr. PiBB, its in-house answer to Dr Pepper. The article contains some classic sniping between the two brands, with a Coke spokesperson dismissing any resemblance by saying, “I haven’t tasted Dr Pepper myself so I wouldn’t know how similar Mr. PiBB is to it. I don’t think it was meant to compete with Dr Pepper - as far as I know Coke just felt there was a market for this kind of soft drink." 

Clements, for his part, countered that Coke’s efforts had actually helped Dr Pepper’s sales. The executive crowed, "I don’t suppose they like to hear me say this in Atlanta, but Mr. PiBB has just stimulated the taste for Dr Pepper. In fact, we’ve found that whenever they quit giving it away in big promotions their share of the market drops way down." 

6. THERE'S NO PERIOD IN THE NAME.

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It may have allegedly been named after a physician, but the correct styling of the name is “Dr Pepper,” not “Dr. Pepper.” The company dropped the period from the name in the 1950s as part of a redesign of the corporate logo. Most sources suggest that the revamped logo was easier to read without the punctuation, and Dr Pepper was reborn. 

7. IT'S NOT JUST FOR DRINKING COLD.

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A cold Dr Pepper can be heavenly on a hot day, but very few families gather around their Christmas trees for a frosty soda in December. In the ’60s Dr Pepper tried to stimulate holiday sales by marketing hot Dr Pepper with lemon as a festive alternative tipple for winter gatherings. The ads found some traction in the South, but as you’ve probably noticed, warm Dr Pepper didn’t become a holiday staple. Still, hot Dr Pepper had its devotees. In the ’70s Foots Clements told multiple journalists that he would have three or four hot Dr Peppers in the morning and a half-dozen cold bottles every afternoon. 

8. THE ORIGINAL RECIPE MAY HAVE SURFACED IN 2009.

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Six years ago, Oklahoma manuscript collector Bill Waters paid $200 for an old store ledger at a Texas antique shop. Notations in the ledger referred to Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store, examples of Charles Anderton’s handwriting, and a curious recipe for “D Peppers Pepsin Bitters” mixed from mandrake root and syrup. A spokesman from the Dr Pepper Snapple Group indicated that the notes were probably a recipe for a bitter digestive aid rather than a soft drink, but the historical find went up for auction as the original formula for the beloved soda. Attendees at the auction agreed—the item did not fetch the $25,000 minimum reserve price. 

9. ROANOKE CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF IT.

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Whether or not there was ever a real Dr. Charles T. Pepper in Virginia remains a matter of debate, but one Virginia city would rather drink a cold Dr Pepper than engage in fact-checking. Roanoke has been Dr Pepper’s biggest metro market east of the Mississippi, and in 1957, the city became the “Dr Pepper Capital of the World.” One secret to the drink’s success in the area? That story about Wade Morrison’s youthful heartbreak at the hands of Dr. Pepper’s daughter may or may not have been true, but the local romance resonated with Roanoke’s soda drinkers and appeared prominently in area promotions.

10. A SPECIAL VARIANT DISAPPEARED IN 2012.

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For 121 years, a bottling plant in Dublin, Texas made and bottled Dr Pepper. By 2012, the Dublin Bottling Works was the country’s tiniest bottler and also the most unusual. Its “Dublin Dr Pepper” was still being made with cane sugar years after the rest of the country had switched to high fructose corn syrup. It was also sold in special retro bottles. After a yearlong legal dispute over distribution territories and labeling, in 2012 the Dr Pepper Snapple Group bought the franchise rights to the area and discontinued Dublin Dr Pepper. However, the news wasn’t all bad for fans of the product—Dr Pepper Snapple Group agreed to keep making real-sugar Dr Pepper for this region of Texas. 

11. THERE'S A DR PEPPER MUSEUM.

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If you need to inject some Dr Pepper into your next road trip, Waco is home to a museum devoted to its native beverage, including its creation and iconic advertising campaigns like 1977’s “Be a Pepper.”