On August 9, 1982, the Coca-Cola Company introduced Diet Coke in the United States, creating the first major brand extension in the soft drink industry and the first diet drink to carry a flagship brand name rather than a separate identity. The product was developed in response to the growing diet-consciousness of American consumers and the success of Tab, Coca-Cola's existing diet drink that had been marketed under a different name to avoid associating the main brand with artificial sweeteners. Diet Coke's introduction represented a pivotal moment in the junk food industry's strategy of creating "healthier" versions of products without fundamentally altering their appeal, a approach that would define the industry's response to public health concerns for decades.

Diet Coke became a cultural signifier in 1980s and 1990s poetry, appearing in the work of poets like Denis Johnson and Mary Karr who used the artificially sweetened drink as a symbol of the decade's peculiar combination of indulgence and self-denial. The product's artificiality and its position as a compromise between desire and discipline made it a rich poetic metaphor for the contradictions of late-twentieth-century American life, appearing in poems about body image, addiction, and the endless quest for pleasure without consequences that defines consumer culture.