7 Up is an American brand of lemon-lime-flavoured non-caffeinated soft drink. The rights to the brand are held by Keurig Dr. Pepper in the United States and by 7 Up International in the rest of the world. The soft drink 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 and originally named it "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda," as 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. 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 and Cadbury Schweppes bought the combined company in 1995. The Dr. Pepper Snapple Group was spun off from Cadbury Schweppes in 2008 and it merged with Keurig Green Mountain in 2018 to form Keurig Dr. Pepper.