 So it really is considered a vacation drink. The poll was done by Hilton because they invented pina coladas in the 1950s, or one of their bartenders supposedly came up with the recipe we use today. A ton of cocktail books mention the drink as far back as the 1920s, but a bartender named Ramon Moreno came up with the official recipe for a blended one at a Hilton resort in Puerto Rico in 1954. The poll also asked about the song.