The Seven-Up Company’s roots go back to 1920, when C. L. Grigg banked on his 30 years of experience in advertising and merchandising to form The Howdy Corporation in St. Louis, Mo. Although he named the company after the Howdy Orange drink he pioneered, his goal was to create a wholesome and distinctive soft drink that would prove irresistible to the nation’s consumers.

Grigg spent more than two years testing 11 different formulas of lemon-flavored drinks. He settled on one that fulfilled the characteristics he sought: refreshing and thirst-quenching. Grigg introduced his new soft drink two weeks before the stock market crashed in October 1929. It was a caramel-colored, lithiated lemon-lime soda, which he positioned as a drink with a “flavor wallop” to market alongside the already-successful Howdy Orange drink.

It cost more than its competition. It also carried the burden of an unwieldy name, “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda,” and it competed against more than 600 lemon-lime soft drinks already in the marketplace. In spite of all the obstacles, the new brand sold well. Shortly afterwards, Grigg changed the brand’s name to 7UP.

The earliest 7UP advertising featured a winged 7UP logo and described the soft drink as “a glorified drink in bottles only. Seven natural flavors blended into a savory, flavory drink with a real wallop.” Acknowledging the success of the 7UP trademark in 1936, Grigg changed the name of The Howdy Corporation to The Seven-Up Company. By the late 1940s, 7UP had become the third best-selling soft drink in the world.

In 1967, The Seven-Up Company introduced the UNCOLA advertising campaign, which sent 7UP sales rocketing nationwide. Consumers endorsed 7UP as a viable, thirst-quenching alternative to colas. The UNCOLA tag immediately joined the nation’s vernacular and remained synonymous with 7UP, despite subsequent campaigns that featured new slogans. =continued=