Who Owns Pepsi?

Pepsi is owned by PepsiCo, a listed American company with no controlling shareholder. But the Pepsi you buy in Britain is not made by PepsiCo — it is made and sold under licence by Britvic, and since 20 January 2025 Britvic has been owned by Carlsberg. So a Danish brewer bottles America’s second cola for the British market. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns the Pepsi brand?

PepsiCo, Inc. is listed on Nasdaq and registered in North Carolina. It has no parent and no controlling shareholder; its largest holders are index managers holding for the investors in their funds.

PepsiCo owns the Pepsi trade marks and the concentrate worldwide. What it does not own is the company that puts Pepsi in cans in Britain.

Parent company and ultimate owner

The British bottler is BRITVIC LIMITED (05604923), and its person with significant control is Carlsberg UK Holdings Limited (00867160), holding 75% or more of the shares, notified 20 January 2025.

That entry is the Carlsberg takeover of Britvic completing. Britvic had been a listed British company; it is now part of a Danish brewing group, and with it went the UK licences to make and sell Pepsi, 7UP and Lipton Ice Tea alongside Britvic’s own brands.

Above Carlsberg UK Holdings sits Carlsberg A/S in Copenhagen, whose largest shareholder is the Carlsberg Foundation — a charitable foundation that holds a controlling block of votes. So the ultimate controller of Britain’s Pepsi bottler is a Danish scientific foundation, which is about as far from Purchase, New York as the question can travel.

Brand owner vs operating company

This is the same split covered on this site’s Coca-Cola page, and Britain manages to have it twice over.

Coca-Cola is bottled here by Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, a listed company whose largest shareholder is a Catalan family. Pepsi is bottled here by Britvic, owned by Carlsberg. Neither cola is made in Britain by the company that owns it, and the two bottlers are separately owned from each other and from the brands they carry.

Britvic also makes Dr Pepper‘s rival products and other licensed brands, while Dr Pepper itself — as that page sets out — is made here by Coca-Cola’s bottler. The licensing map bears no relation to the brand-ownership map.

When the ownership changed

Pepsi-Cola dates from 1898 and went bankrupt twice in its early decades before recovering. It merged with Frito-Lay in 1965 to form PepsiCo, which is why the company is as much a snack business as a drinks one — Frito-Lay is the larger contributor to its profits.

PepsiCo has never been taken over and has no parent. Its ownership changes have all been outward: buying Tropicana in 1998, Quaker Oats in 2001, and spinning off its restaurant businesses in 1997 into what became Yum! Brands.

The British change is the recent one. Britvic held the Pepsi bottling licence for decades as an independent listed company, and Carlsberg acquired it in a deal completing in January 2025, at a reported £3.3bn. The register records that as a single PSC entry dated 20 January 2025.

Related brands in the same group

PepsiCo owns Pepsi, 7UP outside the United States, Lay’s and Walkers, Doritos, Quaker, Tropicana in some markets, Gatorade and Mountain Dew.

Two things it does not own. KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell were PepsiCo restaurants until the 1997 spin-off and now belong to Yum! Brands — a common and understandable error, since the drinks supply relationships survived the separation. And in Britain Britvic’s own brands — Robinsons, J2O, Tango, Fruit Shoot — belong to Carlsberg now, not to PepsiCo, even though the same company bottles Pepsi.

Sources and verification

The Britvic company number and the Carlsberg UK Holdings PSC entry with its 20 January 2025 date are from the Companies House register and can be checked directly.

PepsiCo’s own ownership is disclosed through US securities filings rather than at Companies House, and the Carlsberg Foundation’s control of Carlsberg A/S is a matter of Danish disclosure. The reported £3.3bn price is a press figure. The Pepsi bottling licence is a private contract and is not filed anywhere public, so its terms and duration cannot be verified here. Companies House does not verify most filed information.