Caucasian Ovcharka Society of America 

There are a lot of origin stories for the purebred Caucasian Shepherd, but many of those overlook the definition of 'purebred'. According to the Institute of Canine Biology, a dog breed is considered purebred "when they became noted and recorded for breeding true to themselves and sharing certain characteristics and attributes." In the 1920s, the USSR first began pulling native type dogs out of the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia with the goal of producing a large, dark, long-haired breed that could protect enclosed territories from human intruders. The breed they created was called the Caucasian Shepherd, a nod to the origin of the foundation dogs of the breed. The Caucasian Shepherd was definitively accepted into the FCI in 1984, with the official FCI #328 being published in 2010.

Where some of the confusion about the breed comes from is mistaking the purebred Caucasian Shepherd Dog we know today with the landrace dogs that they were developed from. By definition a landrace is a group of dogs bred with no formal registry or standard. The breed Caucasian Shepherd was created with the publishing of the first standard in 1931.