Born in Gaglianico in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, Trossi came from Italian nobility and had the financial freedom to pursue motorsport as more than a hobby. His interests extended well beyond the racetrack — he was an accomplished boat racer and an aviation enthusiast who also flew aircraft. This breadth of passion for speed and machinery shaped his approach to motorsport, which blended genuine competitive ambition with the independent means to support experimental projects.
Trossi raced across some of the most prominent teams of the pre-war Grand Prix era. He drove for Mercedes-Benz and later for Alfa Romeo, competing in the major European Championship rounds of the 1930s and 1940s. His most significant victories came in the post-war period: he won the 1947 Italian Grand Prix and followed that with success at the 1948 Swiss Grand Prix, both landmark results that demonstrated he remained competitive at the top level well into his forties.
In the 1936 Vanderbilt Cup in the United States, Trossi shared driving duties with the Australian Frederick McEvoy, relieving him for 51 of the 75 laps. Although McEvoy started and finished the race, the points distribution under the mileage-based AAA system credited Trossi with the greater share of racing distance.
One of the most distinctive marks Trossi left on motorsport history was his financial backing of the Trossi-Monaco, an experimental Grand Prix car conceived in 1935. The machine was designed by Augusto Monaco and featured a radically unconventional powertrain: a 16-cylinder, air-cooled, two-stroke radial engine arranged in two rows, with an aircraft-inspired aerodynamic body. The concept was technically ambitious but mechanically intractable. The car proved a spectacular failure in testing and never competed in a Grand Prix. Despite its lack of racing success, the Trossi-Monaco remains one of the more visually striking engineering curiosities of the pre-war racing period.
Trossi held a meaningful early connection to what would become one of motorsport's defining institutions. In 1932, he served as president of Scuderia Ferrari — the racing outfit run by Enzo Ferrari before it separated from Alfa Romeo to become an independent constructor. His involvement came at a formative moment in the team's history, and Ferrari himself recalled Trossi with genuine warmth: "He was a great racer but never wanted to make the effort to reach a dominant position and I remember him with emotion since he was one of the first to believe in my scuderia of which he was a part."
Carlo Felice Trossi died in Milan on 9 May 1949 from a brain tumor, at forty-one years old. His career arc — from wealthy amateur to race winner at the Italian Grand Prix — mirrored the possibilities available to a particular class of European gentleman driver in the pre-war and early post-war era, yet his victories at major Grands Prix ensured he was remembered as a genuine competitor rather than merely a patron. His backing of the eccentric Trossi-Monaco also secured him a place in the history of motorsport engineering, as one of the more adventurous experiments of an inventive and unrepeatable period in racing.