Soda is a sodium containing compound.
Coke is a fuel or a catalyst made from coal.
Soda-pop is a drink made from carbonated water, sugar (or artificial sweetener), and flavoring. It's name is derived from soda-water (a misnomer of carbonated water), and pop, the sound bubbles make when they burst. Soda-water is so called because of one the chemicals involved, sodium bicarbonate i.e. chalk.
Soda-pop is however somewhat of a mouth full. Personally, I'm glad we no longer have to call it something like Dr. Aderton's Pepsin Bitters, but obviously, it had to be shortened to something. Soda-pop is just too long, has a hyphen, and lazy humans just won't put up with saying shit like self contained under water breathing apparatus, when they can just say scuba. As a result, today we have two competing but unequal abbreviations for soda-pop; both born of necessity, but one born in utter ignorance.
The term pop was first used in 1861, and is still the best abbreviation of the correct term. Soda is incorrectly used. Soda is actually an abbreviated term for sodium bicarbonate, or any similar sodium containing compound. Using the term soda to mean soft drink, without the modifier pop, is plain wrong, not to mention it sounds awful. Pop is not only more accurate (at least it describes something about the stuff), it's simply more memorable, more creative, and more musical. No wonder it came first, and remains the de facto nomenclature for soft drinks by people with brains. Soda comes out of your mouth like sludge. Pop, pops! You may laugh at me when I say that there is a proper way to abbreviate something and a wrong way, but ask yourself this, what do we call those little plastic hybrids of forks and spoons? That's right, spork, not foon. Why? both are equal in terms of their derivation. What makes the spoon so damned important that it starts the word, and what makes the fork so important that we use most of its sound? Musicality is the answer. One simply sounds better than the other one.
How's that soda taste? Like fucking chalk!
GET WITH THE FUCKING PROGRAM CALIFORNIA.