Let us call the original price x, shall we?
We are told that after the 20% off on x, the price is $199. Therefore, we can write this situation as
Simplifying this gives
Alternatively, we could say that after 20% of on x, the sale price is now 80% of the original price. In which case, we have the equation
which is the same equation as we got first.
Now we need to solve for x. We do this by multiplying both sides by 100 and then dividing by 80:
and dividing by 80:
Hence, the original price is $248.75.