Sprite is a clear, lemon-lime-flavored (called lemonade in Australia), non-caffeinated soft drink, produced by the Coca-Cola Company. It was introduced to the United States in 1961. This was Coke's response to the popularity of 7-Up, which had begun as "Lithiated Lemon" in 1929. It comes in a primarily green and blue can or a green transparent bottle with a primarily green and blue label.

In the 1980s, many years after Sprite's introduction, Coke pressured its large bottlers that distributed 7-Up to replace the competitor with its own product. In large part due to the strength of the Coca-Cola system of bottlers, Sprite finally took the market leader position in the lemon-lime soda category in 1989.

Sprite consists of carbonated water(fizzy water), high fructose, corn syrup and/or sucrose, citric acid, natural flavors, sodium citrate, and sodium benzoate.

Variations

Coca-Cola began producing a diet version, Diet Sprite in 1974. Although the beverage's sales had increased each year since 1998, the company re-branded the beverage as Sprite Zero in September 2004 in an effort to further increase sales.

Sprite Remix was first introduced in 2003 with a tropical fruit flavor variation. It was replaced on April 1, 2004 with Sprite Remix Berryclear, which has a mixed berry flavor.

Sprite References

The popular Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game features a parody of sprite called Sprunk.

External link

• Sprite official website (http://www.sprite.com)