The vector wave equation for electromagnetic waves, when subject to a number of constraints corresponding to propagation of a monochromatic beam, reduces to a pair of inhomogeneous differential equations describing the transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarized beam components. These differential equations are solved analytically to obtain the most general focused Gaussian beam to order s(4), where s is the beam confinement parameter, and various properties of the most general Gaussian beam are then discussed. The radial fields of the most general Gaussian beam are integrated to obtain the on-axis beam shape coefficients of the generalized Lorenz-Mie theory formalism of light scattering. The beam shape coefficients are then compared with those of the localized Gaussian beam model and the Davis-Barton fifth-order symmetrized beam.