[3] Fausto Rodriguez, a Bacardi advertising executive, claimed to have been present when the drink was first poured, and produced a notarized affidavit to that effect in 1965.

This intrigued a nearby group of American soldiers, who ordered a round for themselves, giving birth to a popular new drink.

[2][8] Another story states that the drink was first created in 1902 at Havana's El Floridita restaurant to celebrate the anniversary of Cuban independence.

[7] Bacardi and other Cuban rums also boomed after independence brought in large numbers of foreign tourists and investors, as well as new opportunities for exporting alcohol.

[6] In 1921 H. L. Mencken jokingly wrote of a South Carolina variant called the "jump stiddy", which consisted of Coca-Cola mixed with denatured alcohol drained from automobile radiators.

Starting in 1940, the United States established a series of outposts in the British West Indies to defend against the German Navy.

[11] Within the United States, imported rum became increasingly popular, as government quotas for industrial alcohol reduced the output of American distillers of domestic liquors.

The song was an adaptation of Lionel Belasco's 1904 composition "L'Année Passée" with new lyrics about American soldiers in Trinidad cavorting with local girls and drinking rum and Coke.

[18] Charles A. Coulombe considers the Cuba libre a historically important drink, writing that it is "a potent symbol of a changing world order – the marriage of rum, lubricant of the old colonial empires, and Coca-Cola, icon of modern American global capitalism".

Additionally, both rum and Coca-Cola are made from Caribbean ingredients and became global commodities through European and American commerce.

Pepsi's later attempts to enter the cocktail market were unsuccessful, especially after the song "Rum and Coca-Cola" solidified the association in the public imagination.

[20] Some sources consider lime essential for a drink to be a true Cuba libre, which they distinguish from a mere rum and Coke.

More elaborate variants with further ingredients include the cinema highball, which uses rum infused with buttered popcorn and mixed with cola.

[18] Another is the Mandeville cocktail, which includes light and dark rum, cola, and citrus juice along with Pernod absinthe and grenadine.