(CNN) -- Coca Cola was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886. Dr. John Stith Pemberton, a local pharmacist, produced the syrup for Coca-Cola. It was put on sale at the nearby Jacobs' Pharmacy for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink.

An international organization, The Coca-Cola Company's first soda fountain sales to Canada and Mexico were recorded in 1897. Its first international bottler -- in Panama -- was established in 1906.

The company entered China in 1927 and its 100th country -- Sierra Leone -- in 1957.

Today, The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest beverage company with the most extensive distribution system in the world, operating in more than 200 countries across the world.

The company currently has over 400 different brands under its control, and is one of the most recognizable names in the commercial world.

The Coca-Cola Company, including the bottling entities it owns, employs approximately 71,000 people. More than 58,000 of those employees work for the company outside of the U.S.

They are the largest private-sector employer across all of Africa. And in South Africa, for every one job created by the Coca-Cola system, 16 jobs are created in the informal retail sector.

The company was placed in the top 25 places to work by Essence magazine and was named Wal-Mart's International Supplier of the Year in 2006. E-mail to a friend