The standard account: Count Camillo Negroni asked bartender Fosco Scarselli to strengthen his Americano by replacing the soda water with gin. The story was first put in print decades later by the Negroni family, and no contemporary documentation survives, so it should be read as tradition rather than record. What is certain is that the drink is an Americano with gin, and that it was circulating in Florence by the early 1920s.