The International Navigation Company (INC) was a Philadelphia-based holding company owning 26 ships totaling 181,000 tons and carried more passengers than either Cunard or White Star, when the company was reorganized as International Mercantile Marine in 1902. The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania approved a charter for the INC on May 5, 1871. The company was commonly known as the Red Star Line due to the red star on its white house flag. The principal American organizer and general agent of INC was the shipbroking firm of Peter Wright & Sons, one of the oldest, most respected, and most financially prosperous of the Philadelphia import-export houses. Principal financial backing was provided by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Although the financial interests were headquartered in the United States, the backers did not believe that a transatlantic steamship line could be run successfully under an American flag. Ships were to be built in foreign yards, operated under foreign flags, and manned with foreign crews.

The Inman Line was one of the three largest 19th-century British passenger shipping companies on the North Atlantic, along with the White Star Line and Cunard Line. Founded in 1850, it was absorbed in 1893 into American Line. The firm's formal name for much of its history was the Liverpool, Philadelphia and New York Steamship Company, but it was also variously known as the Liverpool and Philadelphia Steamship Company, as Inman Steamship Company, Limited, and, in the last few years before absorption, as the Inman and International Steamship Company.