Fanta
carbonated beverages
Fanta () is a German-founded, American-owned brand of carbonated, fruit-flavored soft drinks created by Coca-Cola Deutschland under the leadership of German businessman Max Keith. Today, the brand features over 200 flavors worldwide.
Fanta originated as a Coca-Cola alternative after an American trade embargo against Nazi Germany disrupted the availability of standard Coca-Cola ingredients. The beverage quickly dominated the German market, selling three million cases by 1943. Fanta's current orange-flavored formulation was later developed in Italy in 1955. Real orange juice is used in the orange-flavored recipe in all markets except for the United States.
History
1941–1949: Wartime product
During the Second World War, Germany was under a United States trade embargo and a British naval blockade; the import of Coca-Cola syrup was thus prohibited.
To circumvent this, Max Keith, the head of Coca-Cola Deutschland (Coca-Cola GmbH), decided to create a new product for the German market, using only ingredients available in Germany at the time, including sugar beet, whey, and apple pomace.
He later described them as the "leftovers of leftovers". The name was the result of a brainstorming session, which started with Keith's exhorting his team to "use their imagination" (Fantasie in German), to which one of his salesmen, Joe Knipp, retorted "Fanta!".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fanta” as carbonated beverages. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9935. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1955, 1941 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fanta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.