The  use  of  coffee  as  a  beverage  dates  back  more  than  700  years.  The coffee tree is indigenous to Ethiopia.  From  there  its  propagation  spread  to  Arabia  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  then  to  India,  Ceylon,  and  Java.  Later it was introduced into South America, Indochina, and other parts of Africa. The beverage was taken from Arabia into Turkey, and later into Europe and North America.

The name coffee is used as a general term for the fruits and seeds of plants of the genus Coffee. This  term  also  applies  to  processed  coffee  as  beans,  ground  coffee  extract,  or  instant coffee as coffee brew.

The  ripe  coffee  fruit,  cherry  coffee,  is  the  object  of  primary  processing  in  coffee  producing  countries.  In the so-called “dry  process,”  the  coffee  cherry  is  dried  and  the  dried  pericarp  is  removed  by  mechanical  treatment.  The  wet  process  consists  of  mechanical  removal  of  the  exocarp  in  the  presence  of  water,  and  removal  of  all  the  mesocarp by fermentation, washing, and drying. Both types of primary processing result in green coffee.