The Maserati brothers — Alfieri (1887–1932), Bindo (1883–1980), Carlo (1881–1910), Ettore (1894–1990), and Ernesto (1898–1975) — were involved with automobiles from the beginning of the twentieth century. Alfieri, Bindo, and Ernesto built 2-litre Grand Prix cars for the Turin-based Diatto company, with Alfieri as lead driver; in 1922 the brothers were appointed to manage Diatto's racing activities. After Diatto withdrew from racing in 1926 due to debt, the brothers founded the Maserati marque.
The first Maserati-branded car, the 1926 Tipo 26, was derived from the Diatto 30 Sport and powered by a new 1.5-litre inline-eight engine producing 120 hp. It debuted at the 1926 Targa Florio, where Alfieri Maserati drove it to a class victory and ninth place overall. The company's trident emblem, designed by Mario Maserati — the only brother to choose an artistic career — was inspired by the Fountain of Neptune in Bologna's Piazza Maggiore. A world speed record followed in 1929, when Borzacchini drove the Maserati Tipo V4 16-cylinder to victory at the Tripoli Grand Prix and set a new world record of 247.933 km/h in the Cremona 10 km race.
In 1932, Alfieri Maserati died from injuries sustained in a car accident five years earlier. The remaining brothers continued the company until 1937, when they sold their shares to Modena industrialist Adolfo Orsi, who moved headquarters to Modena in 1940.
Under Orsi ownership, Maserati achieved one of its most celebrated results. In 1939 and 1940, Wilbur Shaw won the Indianapolis 500 driving a Maserati 8CTF entered as the "Boyle Special" — making Maserati the only Italian manufacturer ever to win the race, and the only manufacturer to win it in consecutive years with the same car. The Second World War then interrupted racing, and Maserati produced components for the Italian war effort. After peace was restored, the Maserati A6 series performed well in post-war racing.
Key engineers shaped the post-war team. Alberto Massimino, who had experience with both Alfa Romeo and Ferrari, oversaw racing model design for the following decade, working alongside Giulio Alfieri, Vittorio Bellentani, and Gioacchino Colombo. The Maserati brothers' 10-year contract with Orsi expired in the late 1940s, after which they departed to form O.S.C.A. The engineering team subsequently developed the 4CLT, the A6 series, the 8CLT, and the pivotal A6GCS.
In the 1950s, Maserati became a dominant force in Grand Prix racing. The Argentinian driver Juan-Manuel Fangio raced for Maserati for a number of years, culminating in the 1957 Formula One World Championship, which he won driving the 250F — widely regarded as one of the most beautiful and capable single-seaters of the era. The corpus records that Maserati won two Formula One World Drivers' Championships in total.
Other racing projects in the 1950s included the Maserati 200S, 300S, 350S, and 450S sports racers, followed in 1961 by the Birdcage Tipo 61.
The Guidizzolo tragedy during the 1957 Mille Miglia — in which Maserati driver Alfonso de Portago's car crashed into spectators, killing him, his co-driver, and nine bystanders — led Maserati to retire from factory racing participation at the end of that year. The company continued to build cars for privateers but shifted its focus to road-going grand tourers. The 1957 3500 GT, the first Maserati designed as a series-produced road car, marked that turning point: chief engineer Giulio Alfieri adapted the inline-six from the 350S racer for road use.
Maserati did not return to an official championship until 2004, when it entered the FIA GT Championship with the MC12, a car developed closely around the Ferrari Enzo's chassis and engine. The MC12 proved highly successful, winning the FIA GT championship three consecutive times from 2005 to 2007. It also competed in various national GT championships and the American Le Mans Series; fifty street-legal homologation examples were built.
Since 2022, Maserati has competed in the Formula E championship. In 2023, the company entered the GT2 European Series. In 2025, Maserati unveiled the MCPura at the Goodwood Festival of Speed — a development of the MC20 road car with revised styling front and rear — with production expected to begin in 2026. The MCPura is also available in the open-top Cielo configuration.
The company has been owned by Stellantis, formed from the 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the PSA Group, since that merger was completed.