Professor ranking system
Yes, there are some universities in the U.S. that have ways of promoting professors beyond the rank of "Professor". As you know, the U.S. system has a somewhat standard progression of Assistant Professor to Associate Professor to Professor.

Some universities add a fourth rank to this, often by the name Distinguished Professor. This rank is meant to apply to particularly special professors who continue to be highly productive and exceed job norms even after being promoted to Professor.  

The other rank above Professor in the U.S. is related to named positions, often called named chairs. These are individual faculty positions that are funded by donations to the university (actually, funded by the interest). It takes a lot of money to create a named chair position, so they are relatively few in number. These positions are typically given permanently to one person, and then a new recipient is chosen when that person leaves the position. They are usually considered the most prestigious faculty positions in the U.S.  You can tell someone has one of these because the position usually has a name attached to it, e.g. Susan Q might be the "Joan Smith professor of chemistry". For example, see the list of named positions in science at Penn State.