A Brasileira do Chiado was the birthplace of the term “bica” (a Lisbon word for a shot of espresso) which according to one of several versions of the story, is an abbreviation of “drink this with sugar” (“beba isto com açúcar”), an incentive to make coffee (a novelty at the time) more pleasant for customers to drink whilst creating a habit and marking a ritual.
Another version says that the name would come from the fact that coffee is served directly in cups from the taps (or “bicas”) of the machines where it was made, because customers considered that the intermediate passage to the coffee maker made it lose flavour, having the term «bica» been adopted as a synonym for coffee, until today.