NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. began planning the speedway in 1953 as a successor to the Daytona Beach Road Course. Working with Daytona Beach engineer Charles Moneypenny, France sought a steeply banked design that would allow cars to reach high speeds while giving fans a clearer view of the field. Moneypenny traveled to Detroit to study the Ford Proving Grounds test track, whose banked-corner engineering was shared with the project.
Funding came from several sources: Texas oil millionaire Clint Murchison Sr. lent France $600,000 along with construction equipment; additional support came from Pepsi-Cola and General Motors designer Harley Earl, with France also taking a second mortgage on his home and selling 300,000 stock shares to local residents. Ground broke on November 25, 1957, on a 447-acre parcel leased from the City of Daytona Beach for $10,000 a year over fifty years.
To build the high banking, crews excavated over a million square yards of soil from the infield. The water table filled the resulting void, creating Lake Lloyd, named after Joseph "Sax" Lloyd, one of the original six members of the Daytona Beach Speedway Authority. The extreme degree of banking posed a challenge for the paving contractors; Moneypenny's solution of anchoring paving equipment to bulldozers at the top of the banking proved effective enough that he subsequently patented the construction method and later applied it to Talladega Superspeedway and Michigan International Speedway. By December 1958, construction funds were nearly exhausted, and France relied on advance ticket sales to complete the work.
The first practice runs took place on February 6, 1959. The inaugural Daytona 500 on February 22, 1959, drew 42,000 spectators and produced a finish so close between Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp that the result took three days to determine via photographic analysis. When it opened, the track was the fastest venue ever used for stock car racing, a record it held until Talladega Superspeedway opened a decade later.
The primary layout is a 2.500-mile tri-oval with 31-degree banking in the turns and 18-degree banking at the start-finish line. The front straight is 3,800 feet long and the back straight, known as the superstretch, measures 3,000 feet. The tri-oval shape was revolutionary at the time, greatly improving sight lines for spectators. Along with Talladega Superspeedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway, it is one of three tracks on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit classified as a drafting track.
The road course configuration measures 3.560 miles and was built in 1959. It first hosted a three-hour sports car race called the Daytona Continental in 1962, which was extended to 2,000 km in 1964 and then to a 24-hour endurance format in 1966, becoming the race now known as the Rolex 24 at Daytona. A sharp chicane was added at the end of the backstretch in 1973. Layout modifications in 1984 and 1985 repositioned several road-course turns and converted the chicane into a longer three-legged bus-stop shape, and further revisions in 2003 and 2010 simplified the chicane exit.
The venue also operates a 3.510-mile motorcycle course that bypasses oval turns one and two to reduce tire wear on the banked sections, a quarter-mile dirt flat track built in 2009 to replace racing at the former Daytona Beach Municipal Stadium, and a short paved infield kart track used by the SCCA.
The track's lighting system, installed by Musco Lighting in 1998, made it the world's largest single-lit outdoor sports facility at the time, a distinction it held until Losail International Circuit surpassed it in 2008. On October 9, 2013, Colin Braun set a single-lap record on the tri-oval of 222.971 mph driving a Daytona Prototype prepared by Michael Shank Racing.
The speedway underwent four renovations across its history. The track surface was repaved in 1978 and again beginning July 15, 2010, using approximately 50,000 tons of asphalt across 1.4 million square feet, after the racing surface began deteriorating during the 2010 Daytona 500. The most significant project, branded Daytona Rising, was announced on January 22, 2013, and broke ground on July 5, 2013. Designed by Rossetti Architects and constructed by Barton Malow Company, it removed the backstretch grandstands and completely redeveloped the frontstretch facilities. The $400 million project created five redesigned fan entrance structures called injectors, added wider seats, and increased the permanent grandstand capacity to 101,500, with provision to expand to 125,000. The project was completed in January 2016 in time for Speedweeks.
The circuit has been a fixture in racing simulation for decades. In 1994, Sega released the arcade game Daytona USA, developed by the AM2 team using Model 2 hardware, which is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential racing games ever made and spawned numerous sequels through the 2017 arcade release Daytona Championship USA. iRacing laser-scanned the facility in 2008 and again in 2011 following the repave, making both versions available in official series. The oval and road course layouts have appeared in Gran Turismo 5, Gran Turismo 6, and Gran Turismo 7, as well as Forza Motorsport 6, Forza Motorsport 7, and the 2023 Forza Motorsport.
The track's history carries significant weight in motorsport. Forty-one people have been fatally injured in on-track incidents, the most widely known being Dale Earnhardt, who was killed on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. The speedway is operated by NASCAR under a lease with the City of Daytona Beach that runs until 2054. Its infield lake, the seating configuration that prioritizes sightlines, and the banked tri-oval design set by France and Moneypenny in the late 1950s remain defining characteristics of the modern facility.