In February 2016 the old ‘national drink’ Tianfu Cola was relaunched to much fanfare in China.

The drink had spent two decades in obscurity but back in the late 80s it held an impressive 70+ percent of the Chinese soft drink market. In 1985 Tianfu Cola was selected as the state banquet beverage by the Chinese State Council, soon after that they started exporting, in 1990 they opened a bottling plant in Moscow and even started selling Tianfu Cola in the US through a Japanese middleman.

But then came the Americans … Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi wanted a share of the Chinese soft drink market and they did so either by making joint ventures with existing bottlers in China or simply by taking them over.

Tianfu Cola was made by Chongqing Tianfu Cola Group Co. who at its height had over 100 bottling plants around China. In 1994 they entered a joint venture with Pepsi but it turned out to be a bad deal for the Chinese. Pepsi held the majority of shares in the joint venture and year by year they cut down on production of Tianfu Cola to make way for the production of Pepsi.

By 2005 Tianfu Cola held a share of just 1 percent of the Chinese soft drink market while Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s brands combined held around 80 percent.

In 2006 Tianfu Cola Group decided to sell its shares to Pepsi to be able to focus on bringing back Tianfu Cola. But Pepsi refused to hand over the production rights so Tianfu took Pepsi to court in 2010. The court ordered Pepsi to return the recipe to Tianfu but it took until 2013 for Tianfu to regain its trademark.

Trial production started in 2014 and in 2016 Tianfu Cola was ready for a comeback with the traditional Chinese Spring Festival.

Tianfu Cola’s current market share is unknown but the company have no ambitions of reaching former glory of over 70 percent. The soft drink market is difficult to compete in and The Coca-Cola Company alone have around 40 different sof drinks brands in China.

In January 2023 Tianfu Cola Group was rumored to have been bankrupt but this was immediately denied by the company.

Heavenly gift

Tianfu Cola first came to light in 1981 and was the first Chinese cola drink. The man behind was Li Peiquan who came to Chongqing Beverage Factory in 1978. In those years China was opening up to the outside world and this gave the Chinese a taste for the new and exiting Western lifestyle – including Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

Li Peiquan had tasted an American cola and felt inspired to make his own version. Though, rather than trying to beat the Americans at their own game he wanted to make a unique and distinctly Chinese drink. The result was a recipe with 11 herbs that all naturally grow in China and have various health benefits. E.g. white peony root, rehmannia root, and angelica root which are all known in traditional Chinese medicine. It does not seem to contain kola nut, however, making it a bit of a stretch to brand it as a cola.

Peiquan named the drink Tianfu which means the land of plenty or heavenly gift and is also a name commonly used for the city of Chengdu and its surrounding region which borders Chongqing.

Its name in Chinese is 天府可乐 where 可乐 is Chinese for cola and mimics the sound of cola. It is transliterated as kělè and this is why Tianfu Cola is sometimes branded as kele.

Sources: Chinese Cola Termed Good for Liver, Spleen (LA Times, June 20, 1986), China’s favorite retro cola makes comeback (ecns.cn, March 18, 2016), The generation famous drink in CQ People’s memory – Tianfu Cola (gallileiinstitute.it, May 3, 2019), New Tianfu Cola is Making a Painful Comeback (ichongqing.info, May 6, 2022), China’s ‘national brand’ Tianfu Cola goes bankrupt (Asian Economy, January 5, 2023)