Popularity
This drink was once viewed as exotic, with its dark syrup, made (at that time) from cola nuts and coca.
Soon, as Charles H. Baker, Jr. points out in his Gentlemen's Companion of 1934, the Cuba Libre "caught on everywhere throughout the South ... filtered through the North and West," aided by the ample supply of its ingredients. In The American Language, 1921, H.L. Mencken writes of an early variation of the drink: "The troglodytes of western South Carolina coined 'jump stiddy' for a mixture of Coca-Cola and denatured alcohol (usually drawn from automobile radiators); connoisseurs reputedly preferred the taste of what had been aged in Model-T Fords."
The drink gained further popularity in the United States after The Andrews Sisters recorded a song (in 1945) named after the drink's ingredients, "Rum and Coca-Cola". Cola and rum were both cheap at the time and this also contributed to the widespread popularity of the concoction.
Read more about this topic: Cuba Libre
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—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)