Kofola

A cola for a planned economy

Radio Prague has called Kofola the communist answer to Coca-Cola and Pepsi. It was devised under the planned economy, partly to make use of surplus caffeine left over from coffee roasting, and Kofola’s own history describes a state assignment to develop a purely Czechoslovak drink that could compete with colas from the West.

Kofola’s history says the task went to the state drug maker Spofa, which later took in the Galena works in Opava, and credits a team led by Zdeněk Blažek with two years of work on the formula; Wikipedia places the research at the Czechoslovak Research Institute of Medicinal Plants in Prague. The drink went on sale in 1960 and, by the company’s account, quickly became popular.

What is in the glass

Kofola is made from Kofo syrup, which Wikipedia describes as a blend of 14 herbal and fruit ingredients. Radio Prague reported in 2010 that the drink has a herbal base, contains less sugar and caffeine than its Western rivals and has no phosphoric acid, and an earlier Radio Prague report described the taste as neither quite cola nor quite root beer.

Decline and revival

According to Radio Prague, the 1970s were Kofola’s most successful years. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Coca-Cola and Pepsi arrived in force, sales fell, and in 2004 the company’s marketing director told Radio Prague that for a couple of years the brand had in effect been dead.

Its revival began with the family of the Greek entrepreneur Kostas Samaras, whose soft-drinks business in Krnov started bottling Kofola under licence in 2000 and bought the trademark in 2002. Heavy advertising aimed at young people helped, with the slogan “If you love her, nothing else matters”, which the company dates to 2001, and a Christmas television advertisement first shown in 2003 that became a seasonal fixture.

Made in Slovakia, poured on tap

Kofola entered the Slovak market in the late 1990s, when the company began building a plant at Rajecká Lesná in the Rajec valley; according to CzechCrunch, production in Slovakia opened in 2002, and the plant fills bottles as well as the returnable kegs on which draught Kofola depends. When floods closed the company’s Krnov plant in September 2024, the Czech news agency ČTK reported that Rajecká Lesná and a Czech plant took over most of its production.

Draught Kofola is poured from 50-litre kegs with the same kind of equipment as beer, and it is now a common sight in restaurants and pubs; Radio Prague noted its popularity with drivers and sportspeople. The Kofola group, which ČTK describes as one of the most significant producers of non-alcoholic drinks in Central Europe, has been listed on the Prague Stock Exchange since 2015.

In Emblem World, Kofola sits in the Slovakia drink collection, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.