Which country drinks the most coffee per person?

Finland, at something like twelve kilograms of coffee per person a year - roughly double Italy and several times the United States. The Nordic countries take the top four or five places on almost every measure, which surprises people who associate coffee culture with southern Europe.

The style is different, and that is part of the explanation. Finnish coffee is typically a light roast, filtered, drunk in large volumes throughout the day rather than in small strong doses, and Finnish workplaces have legally-recognised coffee breaks written into collective agreements. It became entrenched partly through prohibition and wartime rationing making it a prized substitute and then a habit that stuck.

Coffee itself came out of Ethiopia, spread through Yemen where it was cultivated from the fifteenth century, and reached Europe in the seventeenth - where it was repeatedly banned or taxed for being politically dangerous. London's coffee houses were called penny universities, and one run by Edward Lloyd, where shipowners and underwriters gathered, became Lloyd's of London. The Ottoman authorities and several European rulers tried to suppress the drink specifically because of what happened when people sat around in public arguing about the news.