Tracking Record Lineage, Family, Etc.

Say for example, that I have a fairly complicated record of a thing
meant for the US market. Then, a Canadian version is created based on
the US one with a few changes so I want to track the connection. It is
fairly easy to make a ParentID field that would indicate the Canadian
thing descended from the US thing.

But, if I then make a British thing from the Canadian one (and I want
to do this because the Canadian one is a closer match to what the
British one needs to be), it becomes more complicated... I can put the
ID of the Canadian one in the ParentId field of the British one. But
then I need to run multiple queries to build the complete lineage back
to the original US record.

More so, if I want to allow n-number of levels to the relationships
between these things, it becomes even more difficult.

This type of issue has come up repeatedly in my work, so I assume it
is not a new problem and that there may be a "best practice" for
handling it.

Can anyone offer any advice, an answer, or point me toward a place
where I may find the answer?

Thanks in advance!