Company attributes
Other attributes
The U.S. version of the 7 Up logo includes a red-orange circle between the "7" and "Up"; this red-orange circle has been animated and used as a mascot for the brand as Cool Spot. Before that, the mascot was a fictional character named Fido Dido created by Joanna Ferrone and Sue Rose. He is used outside the U.S. for limited time retro cups, although the last time and location is not known. 7 Up competes primarily against The Coca-Cola Company's Sprite and PepsiCo's Sierra Mist.
7 Up was created by Charles Leiper Grigg, who launched his St. Louis–based company The Howdy Corporation in 1920. Grigg came up with the formula for a lemon-lime soft drink in 1929. The product, originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda", was launched two weeks before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. It contained lithium citrate, a mood-stabilizing drug, until 1948. It was one of a number of patent medicine products popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Its name was later shortened to "7 Up Lithiated Lemon Soda" before being further shortened to just "7 Up" by 1936.
A myth exists that the 7 Up name comes from the drink having a pH over 7. That would make it neutral or basic on the scale; however, this is not the case, as the 7 Up pH is close to 3.79, making it acidic on the pH scale and similar to other drinks of this type. The real origin of the name is unclear, though Britvic claims that the name comes from the seven main ingredients in the drink, while others have claimed that the number was a coded reference to the lithium contained in the original recipe, which has an atomic mass around 7. Britvic also claims that the name is a result of the fact that 7 Up was bottled in 7-ounce bottles (Coca-Cola and most other soft drinks were bottled in 6-ounce bottles).
7 Up was a privately held corporation owned by the original founding families until it was sold in 1978 to Philip Morris, which sold it in 1986 in two parts: the international division to PepsiCo and the US business to a group led by the investment firm Hicks & Haas. In the US, 7 Up merged with Dr Pepper in 1988; Cadbury Schweppes bought the combined company in 1995. The Dr Pepper Snapple Group was spun off from Cadbury Schweppes in 2008; it merged with Keurig Green Mountain in 2018 to form Keurig Dr Pepper.