Innocent Drinks was founded by three Cambridge University graduates: Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright, then working in consulting and advertising.

In 1998, after spending six months working on smoothie recipes and £500 on fruit, the trio sold their drinks from a stall at a music festival in London.

[7] On 6 April 2009, Innocent Drinks announced on its website an agreement to sell a stake of 10–20% to The Coca-Cola Company for £30 million, with the three founders continuing to retain operational control.

[10] From August 23rd to September 5th, 2012, Innocent Drinks partnered with Disney's Club Penguin to promote the game with the temporary event, Adventure Party: Temple of Fruit.

"This is particularly evident when you look at a smoothie under the microscope and can see big chunks or undamaged cellular material," said lead author Professor Chris Hawes.

In the study by Oxford Brookes Functional Food Centre, the strawberry and banana and mango and passion fruit Innocent smoothies were found to have a low GI value, meaning the naturally found sugars were absorbed slowly by the body, making them no more harmful than the impact of eating an apple on blood glucose levels.

[20] Innocent Drinks discovered that one of their suppliers was contributing to the unsustainable water use threatening UNESCO World Heritage site Doñana National Park, one of Europe's most important wetlands.

[21] In 2022, the Advertising Standards Authority banned an Innocent drinks ad that claimed the company's products have a positive environmental impact.

The Authority found this was untrue, since the company's use of single-use plastics for its bottles meant that over their full life-cycle, they had a negative environmental impact.

[22] From 2010 to 2012, Innocent worked in partner with its supplier and Unilever to map the water footprint and the efficiency of multiple strawberry farms over three years.

[28] In 2008 a report accused the company of making false claims by stating that their product was transported solely by boat or rail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when they were in fact trucked over hundreds of miles from the continent.

[29] Innocent's products usually come in standard plastic or Tetra Pak bottles or beverage cans instead of reusable glass containers.

[31] From 2011 onwards, the company committed to give a minimum of £250,000 to the Innocent foundation in years when there is no profit made, to allow its work to continue.

[34] Innocent Drinks use the following criteria to choose which charities they support: organisations must benefit a community rather than individuals; be not-for-profit; be pursuing charitable purposes; consider taking part in The Foundation scholarship programme, which offers employees of Innocent Limited the opportunity to volunteer with partners and use their business skills to bring benefit to the organisation.

For each smoothie sold Innocent stated they would donate 25p to Age UK to help older people during the cold winter months.