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The Producers Guild of America has a strictly detailed criteria of production responsibilities that must be met by any individual in order for that person to earn a 'producer' title. If there are multiple people who perform some of these functions then there is a 'lead' producer who is the one who either started the ball rolling or performed the greatest number of chores on the list.

Very often an individual wrestles the title because he performed a particularly vital function but usually these folks get Executive Producer billing.

If there are more than one Production Companies then each corporate entity might provide a 'producer'. This happens most often in non-studio, foreign films. The reason in foreign films is that nearly every film-making country (except the USA) has treaties with the others that foster the creation of what is known as 'official co-productions'. Each of these countries has 'soft-dollar' production incentives that are individually worth up to 38% of the budget. The production crosses borders to take full advantage of these deals. Americans are nearly always excluded except as second lead actors. A perfect example of this is THE QUIET AMERICAN, written by an Englishman, directed by a Brit, starring a Brit and a Canadian, filmed in Asia, financed in Germany, pre-production in the UK, post in Germany and some work done in Canada and France. This Michael Caine - Brandon Frasier flick got 90% of its production funding in subsidies. Each of those countries had a production company involved.

There's much more to the structure and it is totally different for TV but that's the gist.