Italian traders introduced coffee to Europe and in 1600 Pope Clement VIII blessed the bean because it was claimed to help sober a population whose fluid intake was largely alcoholic beverages. By the beginning of the 18th century, coffee had sailed to India and Indonesia with the Dutch. And while the Ottoman Turks had failed to overrun Vienna, currently home to more than 1,700 cafes, their coffee had conquered the city by the time the first coffeehouse opened in 1675.
As the beverage gained popularity, the plant itself remained scarce until the Dutch foolishly gave a coffee bush to Louis XIV. Europe's cooler climate prevented the coffee plant from thriving until it was nurtured in a greenhouse. Some even suggest that coffee was the mother of the greenhouse invention. However, coffe production did not begin to explode until French naval officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu brought a single plant to Martinique in 1723. Within 50 years one plant had fostered 19 million more on the island.
Coffee made its way to Brazil in 1727, hidden in a bouquet of flowers, and quickly spread throughout the rest of Latin America and then onto Hawaii by 1823. In 1893 coffee returned home to Africa where it settled in Kenya and Tanzania. After a millennium of traveling, coffee had circumnavigated the globe.