Question: I found this in an ecological park:

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lrDeA.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lrDeA.jpg)

*Cola* is actually a Latin word (a scientific one, referring to the plant), albeit its etymology is [African](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cola#Etymology_1).

I am curious about whether it is "probably" the best-known Latin word in the world. If not, which one might it be? 

I think we could agree that *Cola* it is likely to be indeed very well known. We could also agree that it might be impossible to satisfactorily settle the issue of the "best-known" Latin word. Yet, hopefully, by comparing with other well-known words, we could gauge the extent to which that claim is likely to be true or not.

Answer: 
My impression is that "Latin name" here means "scientific name (of a species)".
Many people seem to conflate scientific names and Latin names, although [the two are different concepts](https://latin.stackexchange.com/q/371/79).
The way I see it, **the claim is that *cola* is the best-known scientific name of a species in taxonomy**.
This claim is not unreasonable, but I will not comment on whether it is true.

Scientific names are formally in Latin, but they use elements from various languages.
Some scientific names are proper Latin, but not very many.
Therefore the claim isn't really about the Latin language at all, although it is worded as if it were.

If someone wants to figure out the best known scientific name, I recommend taking it to a separate question.
I would figure words like *Rex* (eg: tyrannosaurus Rex, Oedipus Rex) would be better known.