Edit: if you search for "forget HSTS", you will see how hard it is to avoid this on some browsers.
For context, each of the retail locations of our company runs its own local MAMP server that serves a web app used all day by the employees on their tablets. It's accessible only on the LAN. Rather than have every employee need to know or type the local IP address for these (which change sometimes), we serve a centralized web page at http://ourcompany.com/employeeApp that just keeps a live list of the local (192.x.x.x) IP addresses harvested from each server in each location, and opens a connection to the local server in an iFrame. Because of what's now a hard ban on loading insecure HTTP content within an HTTPS page, we must serve that central iFrame wrapper page over HTTP. Unfortunately, we now need to give Chrome users a raw IP address for ourcompany.com, to avoid them being redirected infinitely to HTTPS and back.
[edit] I should add that the oddest thing is that it doesn't always overflow with redirects, and on a new device it often is able to go to the HTTP site. But once someone does type https:// or leave out the http:// by mistake, no level of cache clearing seems to remove Chrome's insistence on trying to force HTTPS on that page forever afterwards.
[edit2] The rationale for not setting up local DNS and SSL is that these servers are on all kinds of different local networks in stores around the country, are switched on and off by non-technical managers onsite, and I'm the author of the web app and the only tech support for it. It needs to be as simple as possible so that I'm not spending all my time tunneling into those servers, walking them through router problems and stuff like that.
This is similar (though simpler!) to how e.g. Plex's "watch from anywhere" cloud integration works. Your local plex-server install starts a (plaintext HTTP, Bearer-auth) HTTP server on some uPnP port on your local network; derives a public URL for that server via TURN/STUN; connects to Plex's cloud service, and registers that URL to your Plex account. Then, when you visit https://app.plex.tv/ from any device, the plex webapp talks to the backend of their cloud service; and that cloud backend takes your HTTPS request payload, and makes equivalent plaintext-HTTP requests to the registered Plex server on your local network.
I looked a little bit at Tailscale but assumed it would be too complex for the store employees to manage and would require a lot of hands-on maintenance, and a store-by-store hand holding process which requires scheduling each of them weeks in advance. As it is, the system is secure (local wifi only accessible to employees) and runs even if the store's internet connection goes fully offline... so... I think I'll take your tip and look at it again... the plex model is essentially what I was going for... but I'd be reticent to add any other layers of complexity or anything that could cause downtime.
Then you can support both http & https on ourcompany.com but only http on employeeApp.ourcompany.com.
That should at least be simpler than changing to a raw ip.
Another option might be redirecting to the local ip rather than framing.
Redirecting isn't really a great option because the wrapper app is usually saved as a shortcut to the tablet homescreens to run in full screen mode... saving the redirected url would break more frequently. Also the wrapper iframe polls lots of known local addresses and sees which one loads.
Here's what I'm assuming is the relevant bugtracker entry for the implementation [2].
[1]: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/19719792bbd...
[2]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=139491...