This American Life radio exposes world's top secret recipe

Coca-Cola's tightly guarded recipe was reportedly published by National Public Radio's This American Life earlier this week.

"The formula for Coca-Cola is one of the most jealously guarded trade secrets in the world," the radio program's Web site wrote. "Locked in a vault in Atlanta. Supposedly unreplicable. But we think we may have found the original recipe," TheStreet.com reports.

The show's producers discovered a photograph in a 1979 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showing a copy of the secret recipe from a notebook belonging to an (alleged) friend of Coke's creator.

The photographed notebook page also allegedly showed the ingredients and proportions for a secret ingredient - known as Merchandise 7X - necessary for the recipe.

Furthermore, "It's not what they have now," noted Mark Pendergrast, the author of For God, Country & Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company that Makes It."

Since the drink was invented in 1886, the roughly 8 milligram dose of cocaine has been removed, the amount of caffeine has been reduced, and the types of sweeteners and acids used have been replaced, to name a few changes, according to CBS News.