diff --git a/pytorch_lightning/trainer/connectors/accelerator_connector.py b/pytorch_lightning/trainer/connectors/accelerator_connector.py
index d46aa014ce..33fa27b2e8 100644
--- a/pytorch_lightning/trainer/connectors/accelerator_connector.py
+++ b/pytorch_lightning/trainer/connectors/accelerator_connector.py
@@ -779,12 +779,13 @@ class AcceleratorConnector:
         _gpu_distrib_types = (DistributedType.DP, DistributedType.DDP, DistributedType.DDP_SPAWN, DistributedType.DDP2)
         # DP and DDP2 cannot run without GPU
         if self.num_gpus == 0 and self._distrib_type in _gpu_distrib_types and not _use_cpu:
-            rank_zero_warn(
-                "You requested distributed training on GPUs, but none is available, so we set backend to `ddp_cpu`."
-            )
-            # todo: in some cases it yield in comparison None and int
+
             if (self.num_nodes and self.num_nodes > 1) or (self.num_processes and self.num_processes > 1):
-                self._distrib_type = DistributedType.DDP
+                if self._distrib_type in (DistributedType.DP, DistributedType.DDP2):
+                    rank_zero_warn(
+                        f"{self._distrib_type} is not supported on CPUs, hence setting the distributed type to `ddp`."
+                    )
+                    self._distrib_type = DistributedType.DDP
             else:
                 rank_zero_warn("You are running on single node with no parallelization, so distributed has no effect.")
                 self._distrib_type = None
diff --git a/tests/accelerators/test_accelerator_connector.py b/tests/accelerators/test_accelerator_connector.py
index bae20d5181..70189583e3 100644
--- a/tests/accelerators/test_accelerator_connector.py
+++ b/tests/accelerators/test_accelerator_connector.py
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@ from pytorch_lightning.plugins.environments import (
     SLURMEnvironment,
     TorchElasticEnvironment,
 )
+from pytorch_lightning.utilities import DistributedType
 from pytorch_lightning.utilities.exceptions import MisconfigurationException
 from tests.helpers.boring_model import BoringModel
 from tests.helpers.runif import RunIf
@@ -613,3 +614,12 @@ def test_devices_with_cpu_only_supports_integer():
 
     with pytest.raises(MisconfigurationException, match="The flag `devices` only supports integer"):
         Trainer(accelerator="cpu", devices="1,3")
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("training_type", ["ddp2", "dp"])
+def test_unsupported_distrib_types_on_cpu(training_type):
+
+    with pytest.warns(UserWarning, match="is not supported on CPUs, hence setting the distributed type to `ddp`."):
+        trainer = Trainer(accelerator=training_type, num_processes=2)
+
+    assert trainer._distrib_type == DistributedType.DDP
diff --git a/tests/trainer/test_trainer.py b/tests/trainer/test_trainer.py
index a5ac053395..2a628ba3f3 100644
--- a/tests/trainer/test_trainer.py
+++ b/tests/trainer/test_trainer.py
@@ -1154,6 +1154,14 @@ def test_num_sanity_val_steps_neg_one(tmpdir, limit_val_batches):
             dict(accelerator="ddp2", gpus=2),
             dict(_distrib_type=DistributedType.DDP2, _device_type=DeviceType.GPU, num_gpus=2, num_processes=1),
         ),
+        (
+            dict(accelerator="ddp2", num_processes=2, gpus=None),
+            dict(_distrib_type=DistributedType.DDP, _device_type=DeviceType.CPU, num_gpus=0, num_processes=2),
+        ),
+        (
+            dict(accelerator="dp", num_processes=2, gpus=None),
+            dict(_distrib_type=DistributedType.DDP, _device_type=DeviceType.CPU, num_gpus=0, num_processes=2),
+        ),
     ],
 )
 def test_trainer_config(trainer_kwargs, expected, monkeypatch):