Urban legends and unusual uses

The numerous urban legends about Coca-Cola have led the Urban Legends Reference Pages to devote a whole section of their site to "Cokelore." Coca-Cola has in particular been the target of urban legends decrying the drink for its supposedly copious amounts of acid (its pH value of 2.5 is midway between vinegar and gastric acid), or the "life-threatening" effects of its carbonated water. These urban legends usually take the form of "fun facts" — for example, "highway troopers use Coke to clean blood from highways after accidents," "somebody once died in a Coke-drinking competition," or "Coke can dissolve a tooth overnight."[1] All of these claims are false. (While highway troopers do not use Coca-Cola for this purpose, the television program MythBusters showed that Coca-Cola could be used as a blood cleaning agent, if an expensive one.) Claims of Coca-Cola's unique tooth dissolving properties have been tested on UK television show Brainiac: Science Abuse where a tooth was left overnight in a glass of Coke. It proved Cola could not dissolve a tooth. Coca-Cola was also once believed to have been a possible form of birth control due to this allegedly high acidity level being supposedly able to kill sperm. [2]

One unusual use for Coke is as a rust-control substance — the phosphoric acid in Coke converts iron oxide to iron phosphate, and as such can be used as an initial treatment for corroded iron and steel objects being renovated, etc. The acid can be used to anodize titanium according to various websites.^[24] Corroded battery terminals on cars are often corrected through the use of Coca-Cola. The MythBusters tested this and found that Coke seemed to be no more effective than any other liquid.

According to popular belief, the coca leaf extract cocaine was once added to Coca-Cola. Because cocaine is naturally present in untreated coca leaves, small amounts of cocaine were also present in the beverage. Today's Coca-Cola uses "spent" coca leaves, those that have been through a cocaine extraction process, to flavor the beverage. Since this process cannot extract the cocaine alkaloids at a molecular level, the drink still contains trace amounts of the stimulant.^[25] The United States DEA oversees the importation of coca for Coca-Cola, and later sale of the extracted cocaine to the drug industry.^[26]

Pit crews in NASCAR sometimes pour coke on their pit stalls to create traction for the racecar when exiting/entering the pit.

Emory University is sometimes refered to as Coca-Cola University becuase of various Coke Exec Alumni (Candler, Woodruff, Goizueta) and the fact that a large part of Emory's 4.3 billion dollar endowment originates from donated Coke stock.