how to create database without any handle

Hello,
I am new to Perl programming. Below is piece of perl code I have written to browse through available drivers and list the databases available for each driver.
My question is if a specific database is present, I would like to drop and re-create it. One way of doing that is to connect to it which returns back a database handle and with the help of that handle, just execute a do with DROP DATABASE followed by CREATE DATABASE. However, what if database doesnt exist, how to create it without obtaining any kind of database handle? 
Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
#
# ch04/listdsns: Enumerates all data sources and all
# installed drivers
#
use DBI;  # for database
use DB;
use DBD::ODBC;
my $databaseName = "july";
my $driverName = "ODBC";
### Probe DBI for the installed drivers
my @drivers = DBI->available_drivers();
my $drh = DBI->install_driver('ODBC');
my $dbiPart;
my $odbcPart;
my $datasrcName;
die "No drivers found!\n" unless @drivers; # should never happen
 
### Iterate through the drivers and list the data sources for
### each one
foreach my $driver ( @drivers ) {
    print "Driver: $driver\n";
    my @dataSources = DBI->data_sources( $driver );
    foreach my $dataSource ( @dataSources ) {
     if($driver eq $driverName)
  {
      #Slice it to exactly find the database name.
            ($dbiPart,$odbcPart,$datasrcName)=split(/:/,$dataSource);
            print "\tDatabase Name: $datasrcName\n";
   if($datasrcName eq $databaseName)
   {
       #database exists, so we should FIRST
        #  CONNECT to it
     # DROP and RE_CREATE it
                $dbh = DBI->connect ("DBI:mysql:database=$databaseName",
                                     '','');
            $dbh->do ( qq (DROP DATABASE   $databaseName) );
            $dbh->do ( qq (CREATE DATABASE $databaseName) );
   }
   else
   {
       How do I create database? Below statement
       gives an error ($dbh is undefined, so cannt call "do")
       #$dbh->do ( qq (CREATE DATABASE $databaseName) );
   }
  }
  else
  {
         print "\tData Source is $dataSource\n";
  }
    }
    print "\n";
}