DALLAS (May 13, 2009)--A tattered 359-page ledger from the Waco drugstore where Dr Pepper was invented more than 120 years ago failed to sell at auction, Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries said Wednesday.

The gallery said bidding for the book containing a recipe titled "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters" failed to meet the $25,000 minimum reserve.

Noah Fleisher, a spokesman for Heritage, said the gallery was working on a possible private sale of the book.

Bill Waters of Tulsa, Okla., put the ledger book filled with 40 years of formulas up for auction after discovering it in a Texas antiques store.

Flipping through the more than 360-page book, he found various references to the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco where pharmacist Charles Alderton invented Dr Pepper in 1885.

The book also contains items signed by Alderton.

As for the recipe titled "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters," Dr Pepper Snapple Group has said it isn't a recipe for a soft drink and says that it is likely instead a recipe for a bitter digestive that bears the Dr Pepper name.

The ledger was expected to fetch as much as $75,000.

Waters stumbled across the tattered old ledger book filled with formulas while poking through Texas Panhandle antiques store.

It was beneath a wooden medicine bottle crate.

He bought it for $200, suspecting he could sell it for about $1,000, and his gut feeling about the book’s value turned out to be more than correct.

He later noticed there were several sheets with letterhead pasted into the book that hinted at its past, like a page from a prescription pad from a Waco store titled "W.B. Morrison & Co. Old Corner Drug Store."

An Internet search revealed that pharmacist Charles Alderton invented Dr Pepper and that it was first served in 1885, at the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco owned by Wade Morrison.

Six years later Morrison and Robert Lazenby started what would eventually become the Dr Pepper bottling company.

According to the Heritage Galleries Web site, the book also contains formulas for such concoctions as Dr. Wilkes Dead Shot for Tape Worm; Red Lead Ointment; King's Korn Kure; Indelible Ink; Kough Kure, which contained morphine acetate and chloroform: Catarrh Inhalant; Dr Samuel Johnson's Cough Syrup; Calamine Lotion; La Grippe Remedies; Rubber Stamp Ink; Austin Avenue Cologne; Floor Wax; Orange-Flower Skin Food; Coating Solution for Rx Counter; Bust Developer; Castles Hair Restorer; Stephen's Condition Powder; Miller Chill Tonic; and Conger's Horse Powder.