In 1806, William Colgate, himself a soap and candle maker, opened up a starch, soap and candle factory on Dutch Street in New York City under the name of "William Colgate & Company". In the 1840s, the firm began selling individual cakes of soap in uniform weights. In 1857, William Colgate died and the company was reorganized as "Colgate & Company" under the management of Samuel Colgate, his son. In 1872, Colgate introduced Cashmere Bouquet, a perfumed soap. In 1873, the firm introduced its first toothpaste, an aromatic toothpaste sold in jars. His company sold the first toothpaste in a tube, Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream, in 1896. In 1896, Colgate hired Martin Ittner and under his direction founded one of the first applied research labs[4]. By 1908 they initiated mass selling of toothpaste in tubes. His other son, James Boorman Colgate, was a primary trustee of Colgate University (formerly Madison University).

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the "B.J. Johnson Company" was making a soap entirely of palm and olive oil, the formula of which was developed by B.J. Johnson in 1898. The soap was popular enough to rename their company after it - "Palmolive".[5] At the turn of the century Palmolive, which contained both palm and olive oils, was the world's best-selling soap, and extensive advertising included The Palmolive Hour, a weekly radio concert program which began in 1927 and Palmolive Beauty Box Theater which ran from 1934 to 1937. A Kansas-based soap manufacturer known as the "Peet Brothers" merged with Palmolive to become Palmolive-Peet. In 1928, Palmolive-Peet bought the Colgate Company to create the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company. In 1953 "Peet" was dropped from the title, leaving only "Colgate-Palmolive Company", the current name.

Colgate-Palmolive has long been in fierce competition with Procter & Gamble, the world's largest soap and detergent maker. P&G introduced