Who is this person?

[Eva Elisabeth]

Kudos, Roger! That is correct!

John Stith Pemberton (1831-1888) was a pharmacist, and inventor of Coca Cola.

In April 1865 while serving as lieutenant colonel of the Confederate Army's 12th Cavalry Regiment, Georgia State Guard, Pemberton was wounded in the Battle of Columbus, Georgia. He was slashed across the chest by a saber, and like many wounded veterans, he became addicted to the morphine used to ease the pain. Being a pharmacist he searched for a cure for his addiction, and in 1866, in Columbus, Georgia, started working on painkillers that would serve as opium-free alternatives to morphine.
His first was "Dr. Tuggle's Compound Syrup of Globe Flower (cephalanthus oxidentalis)." Then he began experimenting with coca and coca wines, creating "Pemberton's French Wine Coca" (containing kola nut and damiana).

Due to the public concern about the drug addiction, depression and alcoholism among war veterans, and "neurasthenia", as well as among "highly-strung" Southern women, Pemberton's medicine was advertised as particularly beneficial for "ladies, and all those whose sedentary employment causes nervous prostration".

In 1886, when Atlanta and Fulton County enacted temperance legislation, Pemberton found himself forced to produce a non-alcoholic alternative to his French Wine Coca. Pemberton, with the help of Atlanta druggist Willis Venable, seeked to perfect the recipe for his beverage, which he formulated by trial and error - and blending the base syrup with carbonated water actually happened by accident.

Pemberton made many health claims for his product, touting it as a "valuable brain tonic" that would cure headaches, relieve exhaustion and calm nerves, and marketed it as "delicious, refreshing, pure joy, exhilarating," and "invigorating."

Pemberton decided then to sell it as a fountain drink rather than a medicine, and hoped that his formula "some day will be a national drink"...

This first advertisement was published in the "Atlanta Journal" on May 29, 1886:
   
Left: Late 19th cent. ad. My favorite CC ‘shoot’ was taken in 1964:
       
Although the Coca-Cola Company later stated that the name was "meaningless but fanciful", the name clearly refers to the two main ingredients. Actually, until prohibited by "The Pure Food and Drug Act" of 1906, one liter of Coca Cola contained roughly 250 mg cocaine, an alkaloid isolated from leaves of the coca plant, Erythroxylon coca (and y'all know it's one of the worst drugs).
   
The origin of Cola is the kola nut, a caffeine-containing nut of the evergreen trees of the genus Cola, which are native to the tropical rainforests of Africa. The nuts can be boiled to extract the cola.
   
...and the origin of all this was the Battle of Columbus!

Roger, I know you love sports, so you win my best wishes for a season with many victories of all your favorite teams, players, and athletes to serve as tonics and nerve stimulants.