Sprite (drink)

Sprite is a lemon and lime flavored soda pop made by the Coca-Cola Company. It originally contained water, sugar and lemon juice. It originated in 1959 as the "Clear Lemon" flavor of Fanta and became Sprite in 1968. The name Sprite is made up of the English words sprinkle ("to squirt") and lite ("light"). Along with Coca-Cola and Fanta, Sprite is one of the many worldwide Coca-Cola brands. Today it contains only a very small amount of lemon juice, but also some lime juice and natural lemon and lime flavoring. The ingredients are (according to the 2019 ingredients list): water, sugar, carbonic acid, acidifier citric acid, lemon juice from lemon juice concentrate (1%), lime juice from lime juice concentrate (0.1%), acidity regulator sodium citrate, natural lemon and lime flavor.

There is also the offshoot Sprite Zero (until May 2005 Sprite Light), in which sugar has been replaced by the artificial sweeteners sodium cyclamate (E 952), aspartame (E 951) and saccharin sodium (E 954). In the US, there is also Sprite Remix, which has a cranberry flavour, and Sprite Ice Cube (e.g. in Belgium), which has a peppermint flavour. In the US, the company has launched Sprite Green. This drink uses the active ingredient of the stevia plant as an alternative sweetener. The company sees this drink as the prototype of a new generation of beverages, as Coca-Cola has since filed 24 patents on beverages containing stevia.

Sprite Tea, with the taste of Sprite and green tea, has been available in China since 2010.

In 2017, it was announced in Austria that the sugar content of Sprite would be reduced. Currently, the artificial sweeteners acesulfame K and aspartame are added to the drink.

In 2018, sugar-free limited summer varieties were launched in German-speaking countries: Sprite Lemon, Lime & Mint with lemon, lime and mint flavors in Germany and Sprite Cucumber with cucumber flavor in Austria.

Packaging

Coca-Cola calls the special bottle shape the dimple bottle. Today, this bottle shape is only found in Germany in disposable containers. Sprite is available in Germany (as of 2016) in the following packaging:

• Returnable PET bottle with 15 cent deposit: 1.0 litre
• Non-returnable PET bottle with a 25 cent deposit: 0.33, 0.5, 1.25, 1.5 and 2.0 litres
• One-way can at 25 cent deposit: 0.33 litre
• returnable glass bottle with 15 cent deposit: 0.2, 0.33 and 0.5 litre
• CC-Keg at 25 Euro deposit: 9 and 18 litres

Coca-Cola announced at the beginning of 2015 that it would discontinue its PET returnable bottles with a volume of 0.5 and 1.5 liters. The 1.5-liter returnable bottle is being discontinued, citing declining sales due to demographic changes. According to Coca-Cola, the 0.5-litre returnable bottle suffers from the high cost of returning empties because, as a takeaway item, it would often be returned elsewhere than it was purchased. This meant that empty crates had to be transported at an increased rate. The refill rate was the lowest of the returnable containers at five to six returns, as fifteen percent of the bottles were also not returned at all.

The returnable bottles achieve an average of twenty rotations in the case of glass bottles and fifteen in the case of PET bottles.

In the past, Sprite was also available in the following packaging:

• Returnable glass bottle (with deposit): 0.25 litre
• Returnable glass bottle (with deposit): 0.7 litre
• Returnable glass bottle (with deposit): 1.0 litre
• Returnable PET bottle (with deposit): 0.5 and 1.5 litres
• Disposable can (with deposit): 0.25 litre
• Glass one-way bottle (deposit-free): 0.33 and 1.0 litre
• Disposable can (deposit-free): 0.15 litres (only for airlines)
• Disposable can (deposit-free): 0.33 and 0.5 litres

Glass deposit bottle (1 litre) from 1972