The tenth largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the world (2008).

Colonel Eli Lilly, a pharmacist who had served as a Union officer in the American Civil War, acquired a laboratory on Pearl Street in Indianapolis in 1876 and started Eli Lilly and Company. His innovative process of gelatin-coating pills helped establish the success of the company. When Eli Lilly died in 1898, his son Josiah K. Lilly Sr. took control of the company.