Dentsply Sirona was founded in 1899 as a company that made and sold dental equipment and materials, including artificial teeth, and for over a century it has offered innovative, high quality, economical dental products worthy of its motto "First in Dentistry." In recent years it absorbed Friadent and Degussa's dental division (DeguDent), and has also taken over AstraZeneca's local anesthetic business, making inroads into the field of pharmaceuticals, and has now become the world's largest manufactures and seller in the dental industry. Its wide variety of products, supplied from manufacturing bases in 22 countries, are distributed in more than 120 countries.