The European Commission Tuesday cleared PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) to buy Pepsi Bottling Group Inc. (PBG).

The Pepsi Bottling Group, bottles mostly PepsiCo drinks with operations in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Spain, Russia, Greece and Turkey.

PepsiCo is paying $36.50 per share in cash and stock for Pepsi Bottling. Before its bid, PepsiCo owned a 33% stake in Pepsi Bottling.

The deal together with another bottling company acquisition will allow PepsiCo to control 80% of its North American beverage distribution, a move the company has said will allow it to cut costs as the region's soda sales have been stagnating.

PepsiCo's move reverses the steps the company took a decade ago to separate its bottling operations.

Bottlers, which are heavy users of commodities like aluminum and are responsible for transporting the drinks, tend to have much narrower margins than Coke and Pepsi, which sell the soft drink concentrate and market the brands.

-By Peppi Kiviniemi, Dow Jones Newswires; +3227411483; peppi.kiviniemi@dowjones.com

(Anjali Cordeiro in New York contributed to this article.)