The circuit owed its existence to Fred Craner, a former motorcycle racer who had competed in seven Isle of Man TT races and by 1931 was running a Derby garage and serving as secretary of the Derby and District Motor Club. Craner approached John Gillies Shields, owner of the Donington Hall estate, for permission to use the extensive roads on his land for racing. The original track measured 2.186 miles (3.518 km) and was based on the estate's normal-width unsealed roads.
The first motorcycle race took place on Whit Monday, 25 May 1931. For 1933, Craner secured permission to build a permanent facility, with the original layout widened and sealed at a cost of £12,000. The first car race followed on 25 March 1933, and the inaugural Donington Park Trophy was held on 7 October that year — a 20-lap invitation event won by the Earl Howe in a Bugatti Type 51.
By 1935 Donington was hosting full Grand Prix events. The first Donington Grand Prix over 300 miles was won that year by Richard Shuttleworth, nicknamed "Mad Jack," in an Alfa Romeo P3.
The circuit reached its greatest prestige in 1937 and 1938, when the dominant German Silver Arrows teams of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union came to Donington for the Donington Grand Prix. In 1937, Bernd Rosemeyer won the race for Auto Union. The following year, 1938, brought one of motorsport's most celebrated pre-war drives when Tazio Nuvolari, also in an Auto Union, won the Donington Grand Prix in a race considered among his finest achievements.
These years coincided with the height of the rivalry between the two German factories for the European Championship, and Donington provided British crowds the rare opportunity to witness the Silver Arrows in person. The track's park setting and relatively short layout of under 3 miles made it a visually intimate venue compared to the sweeping road circuits of continental Europe.
The pre-war layout ran through the wooded Donington Hall estate and used the natural contours of the parkland. It was compact by Grand Prix standards, which suited the high-powered Silver Arrows machines by forcing rapid acceleration and braking cycles while keeping them visible to spectators for much of the lap.
Racing at Donington ended in 1939 as the Second World War approached. In 1940 the circuit was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence and converted into a military vehicle storage depot. It was formally derequisitioned in 1956 and approved for racing again by local planning authorities in 1957, though it would not be revived as an active racing venue until the 1970s under new ownership.
The pre-war Donington Park occupied a unique place in British motorsport as the only venue outside Brooklands capable of hosting top-level Grand Prix racing before the war. Its role in bringing continental European competition — particularly the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union Silver Arrows during the peak years of state-backed German motor racing — to an English audience gave British spectators direct access to the dominant machines and drivers of the era. The circuit's post-war revival by Tom Wheatcroft in the 1970s was partly inspired by reverence for this pre-war heritage, and Wheatcroft built the Donington Grand Prix Exhibition to house one of the world's largest collections of historic Grand Prix cars as a direct tribute to that era.