Alfonso Morini was born in 1898 and was repairing motorcycles before he was sixteen. In 1925 he partnered with Mauro Mazzetti to build a 120cc two-stroke racing motorcycle under the MM name. The project yielded rapid results: in 1927 Morini's MM 125 set six world records at Monza during the Grand Prix of Nations, records that stood for twenty years. In 1933 Morini set a world speed record for 175cc motorcycles at 162 km/h.
After parting from Mazzetti in 1937, Alfonso Morini went into production of three-wheelers under the Moto Morini name, then redirected the company toward motorcycles after the Second World War. A new factory at Via Berti in Bologna launched a 125cc two-stroke T125 in 1946, and four-stroke models followed in the early 1950s.
Racing success began immediately after the war. Raffaele Alberti won the Italian Championship for lightweight motorcycles on a two-stroke 125 Competition in 1948. Umberto Masetti repeated in 1949 on a four-stroke SOHC 125 producing 12 hp at 10,000 rpm. By 1952 the 125 SOHC was winning outside Italy, with Emilio Mendogni taking both the Nations Grand Prix and the Spanish Grand Prix.
A critical step came in 1958 when Alfonso Morini, Dante Lambertini, and Nerio Biavati designed the 250 GP Double Camshaft. This single-cylinder racing machine developed 38 hp at 11,000 rpm and reached a maximum speed of 227 km/h, making it the fastest single-cylinder four-stroke 250cc racer of its era — a distinction it has retained to the present day. Tarquinio Provini won the Italian Championship on a Moto Morini 250 GP in 1961 and 1962.
The most celebrated chapter in Moto Morini's racing history came in 1963 when Provini convinced Alfonso Morini to contest the 250cc World Championship. What followed was one of the closest title fights in Grand Prix history. Provini and Honda's Jim Redman each won four races across the season. The championship was not decided until the final round in Japan. The Moto Morini team faced an obstacle: the Honda factory refused to allow Provini to practice before the race, a deliberate hindrance to the single-cylinder machine's preparation. Redman won the championship over Provini by just two points. Morini had come within the narrowest margin of defeating a multi-cylinder Honda factory effort with a single-cylinder machine of its own construction.
Alfonso Morini died on 30 June 1969, aged 71. His daughter Gabriella Morini took control of the company and remained at the helm until 1986. In 1961, a young Giacomo Agostini began his racing career on a Moto Morini Settebello, finishing second at the Trento-Bondone hill climb. Agostini won the Italian Cadet Championship in 1962 and the Italian Junior Championship in 1963 on Morini machinery before moving to MV Agusta.
The company passed to Cagiva in 1987 and went through a succession of ownership changes and financial difficulties in subsequent decades. A revival under new ownership after 1999 produced large V-twin machines and a brief return to competition in World Superbike racing with a three-cylinder Tornado in the early 2000s. Moto Morini has continued under Chinese ownership since 2018 with Zhongneng Vehicle Group, maintaining its Pesaro base. Its Grand Prix racing legacy, however, rests primarily on the audacity of the 1963 campaign and the enduring technical achievement of the single-cylinder 250 GP.