Exhibition Place, a 197-acre publicly owned mixed-use district on the Lake Ontario waterfront just west of downtown Toronto, has hosted automobile demonstrations and racing events for over a century. Motorsport at the site dates to the arrival of a 1916 Indianapolis 500-winning Peugeot during the 1918 Canadian National Exhibition. Stock car racing on a quarter-mile paved circuit ran inside Exhibition Stadium from 1952 to 1966, including a 1958 NASCAR Cup Series race.
The modern street circuit's origins trace to 1985, when Molson Breweries sought a permanent venue for Canadian IndyCar racing following an ill-fated Sanair Speedway debut. Toronto City Council approved the proposal by two votes in July 1985, and the first Molson Indy Toronto was held on July 20, 1986, won by Bobby Rahal.
The event grew rapidly into Canada's second-largest annual sporting event, drawing three-day attendance figures routinely around 170,000 people, eclipsed domestically only by the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.
In 1996, American driver Jeff Krosnoff was killed in a crash with four laps remaining. Volunteer corner marshal Gary Avrin also died in the same incident, and marshal Barbara Johnston was injured.
The race operated as part of CART from 1986 to 2003, then under the Champ Car World Series banner from 2004 to 2007. During the Champ Car era, the name changed in 2006 from Molson Indy Toronto to Molson Grand Prix of Toronto to distance the series from the rival IRL's exclusive use of the "Indy" brand. Steelback Brewery then signed a multi-year deal to take over title sponsorship in 2007.
The February 2008 merger of Champ Car and IndyCar left the race's future uncertain. After attempts to save it for 2008 failed, the race was confirmed cancelled in March 2008. Andretti Green Racing purchased the former race assets in May 2008 and secured its return, with a new multi-year Honda Canada title sponsorship announced in September 2008. The Honda Indy Toronto resumed in 2009.
The 2020 and 2021 editions were cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that barred non-essential cross-border travel and mass gatherings in Ontario.
The original circuit layout ran from 1986 onward. In 2016, the track was modified to accommodate the newly constructed Hotel X Toronto, relocating the pit lane to the opposite side of the course — from outside turn 9 to exiting just after turn 11 — and making turn 11 sharper than in previous configurations.
In 2013, the race weekend adopted a two-race format with a standing start Saturday race and a rolling start Sunday race. The 2013 Sunday race marked the first successful standing start in unified IndyCar Series history. By 2015, both the standing-start format and the two-race format were abandoned.
Michael Andretti is the all-time race win leader at Toronto with seven victories. Simon Pagenaud took both pole position and the win at the 2019 Honda Indy Toronto as part of his championship-contending season. The race was IndyCar's second-longest-running street race behind only the Grand Prix of Long Beach.
In September 2025, it was announced the event would relocate to the city of Markham, Ontario, for the 2026 season as part of a five-year deal, closing the Exhibition Place chapter after 39 years of racing on the site.