Mixed order phase transitions (MOT), which display discontinuous order parameter and diverging correlation length, appear in several seemingly unrelated settings ranging from equilibrium models with long-range interactions to models far from thermal equilibrium. In a recent paper [1] an exactly soluble spin model with long-range interactions that exhibits MOT was introduced and analyzed both by a grand canonical calculation and a renormalization group analysis. The model was shown to lay a bridge between two classes of one dimensional models exhibiting MOT, namely between spin models with inverse distance square interactions and surface depinning models. In this paper we elaborate on the calculations done in [1]. We also analyze the model in the canonical ensemble, which yields a better insight into the mechanism of MOT. In addition, we generalize the model to include Potts and general Ising spins, and also consider a broader class of interactions which decay with distance with a power law different from 2.