By the mid-1980s, all of the major soft drink brands had switched to HFCS for their North American products, with the original formula of Coca-Cola being one of the last holdouts.

By the late 2000s, many soft drink fans wanted a return of sugar in the drinks, citing a slightly sweeter taste, controversies over negative health effects of HFCS, increases in the cost of corn syrup due to increased use of the product for ethanol production, as well as the cost of sugar having since dropped at that time.

"[2][3] This product has 10 mg less sodium than the previous Pepsi Throwback, and 1 g less sugar per 20 fl oz (591 mL), reducing the labeled calorie count on a bottle of that size from 260 to 250.

With the rebranding to Pepsi-Cola Soda Shop Made with Real Sugar in early 2024, the font color of the text "Pepsi-Cola", "Soda Shop", and "Made with Real Sugar" was changed to black, in a similar way as the rebranded regular Pepsi logo as of 2023, with both the can design and bottle labels now having a white background with what appears to be a close-up of the red and blue sections of the Pepsi globe at the top and bottom edges.

Another sugar-sweetened version commonly called Dublin Dr Pepper had previously been available from a single bottling plant in Texas, which continued production until January 2012.

In 2011, Dr Pepper Snapple Group announced "7 UP Retro", a sugar-sweetened version of 7 Up, that would be available for a limited time.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group also later released a 7UP variant called "Simple 7 UP" which contains natural ingredients and a mixture of cane sugar and stevia leaf extract as the sweeteners.