Why 7UP gave itself a lime-lemon makeover

FastCompany: 7UP has reformulated its recipe, cranking up the lime flavoring so much it’s actually changing what it calls itself. The lemon-lime soda is now going by lime-lemon. 7UP’s U.S. owner, Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP), which sells beverages like Dr Pepper, A&W Root Beer, and Canada Dry, announced the reformulation and an accompanying rebrand Monday as part of a campaign they’re calling “Flip the Sip.” This isn’t a limited-edition flavor or a new subbrand—it’s a new 7UP. In blind testing, KDP found consumers preferred the reformulated, lime-forward 7UP and thought it tasted more crisp and refreshing.

The new cans are expected to begin hitting shelves in mid-August as existing inventory is sold through. Lemon-lime and citrus sodas are popular, especially among younger consumers, according to KDP’s research. Their 2026 trend report found 72% of Gen Alpha and Gen Z gravitate towards citrus-forward flavors, compared with 68% of millennials. It’s also a crowded category. “Dr Pepper is a one-of-one, right? Nothing else tastes like Dr Pepper,” KDP’s chief marketing and innovation officer, Drew Panayiotou, tells Fast Company . For 7UP, though, “there’s a lot of competitors and there are a lot of options,” he says.

“So the challenge for 7UP is how do you maintain distinctiveness in an existing category. “The minute you don’t maintain distinctiveness in lemon lime, you stop growing,” adds Panayiotou, who worked on Sprite when he was in a senior marketing leadership role at Coca-Cola. The citrus wars Launched in 1929, 7UP was the first lemon-lime soda, but today it’s a distant second to Sprite , the category leader. PepsiCo, which sells 7UP internationally, has struggled to capture a meaningful market share in the U.S. with failed brands like Slice and Teem.

In 2018, it replaced its lemon-lime brand Sierra Mist with Starry , which has boosted its visibility as the official soft drink of the NBA and WNBA and through campaigns with the rapper Ice Spice and the Miami Heat forward Giannis Antetokounmpo. 7UP’s reformulation was a strategy-led innovation inspired by its status as a challenger brand, and that also drove the design process. Ten packaging concepts were designed by KDR’s team with its chief design officer in residence, James Somerville, and an outside design agency, Deutsch LA. Many of them, including the final version, were modernized takes on classic 7UP designs.

7UP last redesigned its cans in 2023 . The new cans are ultraminimalist and solid green, with “lime lemon” written in black above the brand’s redrawn white-and-red logo that’s now vertical and spells out “UP” in all caps instead of lowercase. [Image: KDP] Designers played around with placement of the red dot, and in the new can, it peeks out from behind the U and comes out over the 7 . The new vertical placement of the logo, KDP found, dramatically increased consumers’ ability to find it, and the red dot was a powerful identifier. 7UP Cherry’s can comes in a Dr Pepperesque burgundy, and the zero sugar versions of each are black.

7UP was once marketed as the “uncola,” and with its repositioning, the brand takes on a similar role as a lime-lemon soda in a lemon-lime world.

The rebranding of 7UP is significant for the beverage industry as it highlights strategic shifts in branding and flavor positioning, making it relevant for brand strategy professionals looking to understand market differentiation.