The ice cream float was invented by Robert M. Green in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1874 during the Franklin Institute's semicentennial celebration.

[4] There are at least three other claimants for the invention of the root beer float: Fred Sanders,[5] Philip Mohr,[5][6] and George Guy, one of Robert Green's own employees.

In 2014, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter themed area at the Universal Orlando Resort debuted the drink composed of the ingredients brown sugar and butter syrup mixed with cream soda and whipped cream based on the originally fictional drink served at Hogsmeade.

Today, a Boston cooler is typically composed of Vernors ginger ale and vanilla ice cream.

[15] The first reference to a Boston cooler appears in the St. Louis Post Dispatch where a New York bartender claimed to have coined the phrase for a summer cocktail of sarsaparilla and ginger ale.

The name was also applied to a number of different ice-cream float combinations, including root beer, though ginger ale became the most common soft drink component.

The Purple Cow,[24] a restaurant chain in the southern United States, features this and similar beverages.

In a more general context, a purple cow may refer to a non-carbonated grape juice and vanilla ice cream combination.

Grapico, a brand of grape soda bottled in Birmingham, Alabama, is ubiquitously linked to ice cream floats in that state.

Frank J. Wisner, owner of Colorado's Cripple Creek Brewing, is credited with creating the first root beer float on August 19, 1893.

[citation needed] In Brazil, a vaca amarela (yellow cow) or vaca dourada (golden cow) is an ice cream soda combination of vanilla ice cream and orange or guaraná soda, respectively.