  We consider finite sized atomic systems with varying number of particles
which have dipolar interactions among them and also under the collective
driving and dissipative effect of thermal photon environment. Focusing on the
simple case of two atoms, we investigate the impact of different parameters of
the model on the coherence contained in the system. We observe that even though
the system is initialized in a completely incoherent state, it evolves to a
state with a finite amount of coherence and preserve that coherence in the
long-time limit in the presence of thermal photons. We propose a novel scheme
to utilize the created coherence in order to change the thermal state of a
single two-level atom by repeatedly interacting it with a coherent atomic beam.
Finally, we discuss the scaling of coherence as a function of the number of
particles in our system up to $N=7$.
