Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) is a global pharmaceutical company. Eli Lilly's global headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States. The company also has offices in Puerto Rico and 17 other countries. Their products are sold in approximately 125 countries. The company was founded in 1876 by a pharmaceutical chemist, Eli Lilly, after whom the company was ultimately named.

Among other specialties, Lilly was the first company to mass-produce penicillin, as well as one of the first pharmaceutical companies to produce human insulin using recombinant DNA, and today is the world's largest manufacturer and distributor of psychiatric medications.

A Fortune 500 corporation, Eli Lilly had revenues of $20 billion in 2008, making it the 148th largest company in the United States and the 10th largest corporation by global pharmaceutical sales. The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange and is a member of the S&P 500 stock index. Eli Lilly was one of the Nifty Fifty stocks that propelled the mid 20th century bull market.

A company is a business organization. It is an association or collection of individual real persons and/or other companies, who each provide some form of capital. This group has a common purpose or focus and an aim of gaining profits. This collection, group or association of persons can be made to exist in law and then a company is itself considered a "legal person". The name company arose because, at least originally, it represented or was owned by more than one real or legal person.

In the United States, a company may be a "corporation, partnership, association, joint-stock company, trust, fund, or organized group of persons, whether incorporated or not, and (in an official capacity) any receiver, trustee in bankruptcy, or similar official, or liquidating agent, for any of the foregoing." In the US, a company is not necessarily a corporation.

In English law and in the Commonwealth realms a company is a body corporate or corporation company registered under the Companies Acts or similar legislation. It does not include a partnership or any other unincorporated group of persons, although such an entity may be loosely described as a company.

Eli Lilly (July 8, 1838 – June 6, 1898) was an American soldier, pharmaceutical chemist, industrialist, entrepreneur, and founder of the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation. Lilly enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War; he recruited a company of men to serve with him in an artillery battery, was later promoted to colonel, and was given command of a cavalry unit. He was captured near the end of the war and held as a prisoner of war until its conclusion. After the war, he attempted to run a plantation in Mississippi, but failed and returned to his pharmacy profession after the death of his wife. Lilly remarried and worked in several pharmacies with partners before opening his own business in 1876 with plans to manufacture drugs and market them wholesale to pharmacies.

His company was successful and he soon became wealthy after making numerous advances in medicinal drug manufacturing. Two of the early advances he pioneered were creating gelatin capsules to hold medicine and fruit flavoring for liquid medicines. Eli Lilly & Company was one of the first pharmaceutical firms of its kind; it staffed a dedicated research department and put in place numerous quality-assurance measures.