The track was composed entirely of public roads, both narrow and bumpy, running through a roughly triangular course that connected the seaside town of Pescara with hill villages to the west. From Pescara, the route moved west through the suburb of Rione Partenze into the villages of Frascone, Valle Carbone, Spoltore, and Case Fornace, negotiating a mixture of slow and fast bends through terrain that reached a maximum elevation of 185 m above sea level at Spoltore. The course then dropped out of the hills into Cappelle sul Tavo and followed two long straights of approximately 5.5 km each — comparable in length to the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans and the Buonfornello Straight of the Targa Florio — along the coast through Montesilvano before returning to Pescara. The section along the coast was nicknamed "The Flying Kilometre." In 1934, the first artificial chicane in Formula One circuit history was built on the start-finish straight to reduce speeds through the pit area after the full-length coastal run.
The first race at Pescara took place in 1924. Non-championship Formula One races were held in the early 1950s. In 1957, with several grands prix cancelled due to disruptions caused by the Suez Crisis, the FIA added Pescara to the World Championship calendar. The 1957 Pescara Grand Prix drew in excess of 200,000 spectators. Scuderia Ferrari chose not to enter, reportedly because Enzo Ferrari feared for his drivers' safety on the course. The race was won by Stirling Moss. Like other long circuits of the era — notably the original Nürburgring and Spa-Francorchamps layouts — Pescara was revered as a supreme test of driver ability but was also extremely dangerous and unforgiving.
On the track's fatal history, Guy Moll was killed during the 1934 Coppa Acerbo on "The Flying Kilometre" at Montesilvano.
The circuit's last race was a four-hour World Sportscar Championship event in 1961, won by Lorenzo Bandini and Giorgio Scarlatti driving a Ferrari 250 TR for Scuderia Centro Sud. After that event the circuit was permanently closed as a racing venue, the organisers having concluded it was no longer possible to guarantee the safety of drivers and spectators on roads running through inhabited villages at racing speeds.
Pescara holds a singular place in Formula One history as the longest circuit to have hosted a World Championship round, at more than 25 km per lap. Its single championship appearance in 1957 captures a brief window when the sport still used public-road courses of extreme length, a practice that effectively ended as the calendar professionalised through the late 1950s and 1960s. The circuit's reputation for danger, combined with Ferrari's refusal to attend and the scale of its spectator turnout, make the 1957 Pescara Grand Prix one of the more unusual entries in the sport's championship record.