What was Coca-Cola’s first advertising slogan to describe it as “The Great National Temperance Beverage”?

“The Great National Temperance Beverage” was an early Coca-Cola advertising slogan.

The phrase reflected the social setting in which Coca-Cola was marketed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Coca-Cola was a nonalcoholic drink, and the word “temperance” connected it with campaigns promoting moderation or abstinence from alcohol.

Early Coca-Cola advertising also presented the beverage as refreshing and invigorating. Its marketing language changed as the company expanded nationally and developed a more modern consumer brand.

Readers sometimes assume that “The Pause That Refreshes” was Coca-Cola’s earliest major slogan, but that phrase belongs to a later era. The temperance wording belongs to Coca-Cola’s early advertising history and shows how the company positioned the drink before twentieth-century mass advertising fully developed.