It was 7UP as its roots go back to 1920, when C. L. Grigg set himself to create a distinctive soft drink that would prove irresistible to the nation's consumers.
In 1929, Grigg introduced 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 and had an unwieldy name, "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda." At the time, more than 600 lemon-lime soft drinks were already in the marketplace. In spite of the obstacles, the new brand sold well. Shortly afterwards, Grigg changed the brand's name to 7 UP.
As per Pitt.edu, Sprite was introduced to the United States in 1961 to compete against 7-Up.
In the 1980's, many years after Sprite's introduction, Coke pressured its large bottlers that distributed 7 Up to replace the competitor with the Coca-Cola product. In large part due to the strength of the Coca-Cola system of bottlers, Sprite finally became the market leader position in the lemon-lime soda category in 1989.
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