Chinese Coca Cola?

BEIJING — Coca-Cola, a company first famous for mixing South American coca leaves with African kola nuts, is trying to repeat history.

For months, the Atlanta-based drinks giant has been working quietly to perfect prototype beverages using Chinese herbal cures. Analysts and executives suggest the project could be as important to the company's future as its original formula was to its past.

The effort involves employees throughout the company of 90,500 but is shrouded in secrecy. Executives have rarely mentioned the collaboration beyond a short press release issued when Coke and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences opened a research center in Beijing last October.

While Coke may be reluctant to talk about potential drinks inspired by Chinese medicine, some analysts speculate that whatever executives are brewing could be a major step for the 122-year-old company.

Access Asia, a Shanghai-based market-research firm, said in a January report that Coke's aim may be nothing less than to create "the new product for the new millennium."

With consumers increasingly concerned about their health and wary of sugar-laden beverages, Coke is "looking for exotic herbal ingredients to make a completely new drink and sort of revolutionize the whole soft-drink industry," said Matthew Crabbe, director of Access Asia.

Just-drinks.com, which monitors the beverage industry, reported in May that Coke was planning to launch a Chinese medicine-based drink this year "to exploit the hype surrounding the Beijing Olympics."

Partly, Coke has been pushed toward developing more healthy alternatives to its traditional line of sodas.