Picture this: it's 1957 at the Thessaloniki International Fair in Greece, and a Nescafé representative named Dimitris Vakondios desperately needs his coffee fix. The problem? No hot water. His solution would accidentally create one of the most beloved cold coffee drinks in the world. He grabbed a shaker meant for demonstrating a new chocolate milk product, tossed in instant coffee, cold water, and ice, then shook it vigorously. The frothy, refreshing result was the Greek frappé—and coffee culture would never be the same.

Here's where things get interesting: the Greek frappé and what Americans call a frappé (or frappuccino) are actually completely different drinks. The original Greek version is decidedly simple—instant coffee, sugar, water, and ice, all shaken until it develops that signature foam cap. It's a no-frills approach that became so integral to Greek culture that you'll find it at virtually every café from Athens to the smallest island village. Greeks take their frappé seriously, often sipping it slowly over hours during their social gatherings. The drink even has its own ordering language: "metrios" means medium sugar, "glykos" is sweet, and "sketos" is unsweetened.

Fast forward to the 1990s, and Starbucks entered the chat with their own interpretation. The coffee giant trademarked "Frappuccino" in 1995, creating a blended drink that's closer to a milkshake than its Greek ancestor. This version combines coffee with milk, ice, and usually a mountain of whipped cream and flavored syrups. It became such a phenomenon that by 2015, Starbucks was selling more than 1 billion Frappuccinos annually. The confusion between these two very different drinks has led to countless surprised tourists ordering a frappé in Greece and wondering where all the chocolate syrup went.

The divide between these two interpretations sparked what coffee aficionados jokingly call the "Frappé Wars." Purists argue that the Greek version represents coffee in its honest, caffeinated glory, while the blended version is dessert masquerading as coffee. But here's a fun twist: both versions owe their existence to instant coffee—a product that specialty coffee snobs typically turn their noses up at. Yet Dimitris Vakondios's improvised creation became so iconic that Greece has one of the highest per-capita instant coffee consumption rates in the world, almost entirely thanks to the frappé. Who knew that one impatient coffee lover's ingenuity would spawn a global phenomenon with multiple personalities?