Premium-Cola

Premium-Cola is a soft drink brand founded on November 23, 2001, in Hamburg, Germany, by a collective of fans of the German brand Afri-Cola, at the time reduced in caffeine.

The collective (which named itself "Interessengruppe Premium") started by running a protest campaign for more than two years against recipe changes in Afri-Cola.

The brand, founded in 1931, was bought by Mineralbrunnen Überkingen-Teinach AG in 1999, who would then change the recipe. The new Afri-cola contained a reduced amount of caffeine (the original Afri-cola contained 250 mg/L) and its original taste was subdued, in order to appeal to a wider variety of customers.

The protests of the "Interessengruppe Premium" began to produce the original recipe cola on their own and named it Premium-Cola.

To avoid legal issues with the Mineralbrunnen AG, one ingredient was changed, malic acid, which was replaced with phosphoric acid.