Johann Puch had worked as a bicycle agent and manufacturer since 1889, building Styria safety bicycles in a Graz workshop and employing more than 300 workers by 1895. After a dispute with business partners, he founded a new company in 1899 — the First Styrian Bicycle Factory AG — in Graz's Puntigam district. Engine production began in 1901 and cars followed in 1904. A two-cylinder Puch Voiturette entered production in 1906, and in 1909 a Puch car set a world speed record of 130.4 km/h. Puch automobiles competed successfully in the pre-war Österreichische Alpenfahrt rally.
By 1912, when Johann Puch retired and became honorary president, the company employed around 1,100 workers and produced 16,000 bicycles and over 300 motorcycles and cars annually. During World War I, Puch was a major vehicle supplier to the Austro-Hungarian Army.
After the Austro-Hungarian Empire's collapse, automobile production shrank, though motorcycle development continued. In 1923, Italian engineer Giovanni Marcellino redesigned the split-single engine that became Puch's technical signature. The asymmetric port timing and improved breathing of the updated split-single gave Puch a competitive edge, and in 1931 the company won the German Grand Prix with a supercharged split-single machine.
In 1928, Puch merged with Austro-Daimler to form Austro-Daimler-Puchwerke. A further merger in 1934 with Steyr-Werke AG created the Steyr-Daimler-Puch conglomerate, within which Puch continued to manufacture products under its own name. During World War II, Puch's plants were converted to military production, and a second factory opened in 1941. The company's facilities were later identified as having used slave labour from the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp system during the war.
After 1945, the Puch factory was requisitioned by British Army repair and maintenance units before returning to civil production. A 1949 agreement with Fiat in Turin marked the start of a long automotive licensing relationship. The 1950s through mid-1970s saw sharp increases in motorcycle, bicycle, and moped production.
In Grand Prix motorcycle racing, Puch competed in the 50cc class that was established as a World Championship category in 1962. Their machines represented Austria in a class dominated by Spanish and Italian manufacturers, and the marque accrued results at the highest level of the small-displacement category. Outside Grand Prix racing, Harry Everts won the 1975 250cc Motocross World Championship for Puch, while Sobiesław Zasada claimed the European Rally Championship in 1966 with a Puch 650 TR II.
Two new road motorcycles, the 125 and 175 SV, launched in 1953. The highly successful MS 50 moped followed in 1954. The Puch Maxi moped, introduced in 1969, became the company's most commercially successful product, with 1.8 million units built. Record production in 1978 saw more than 270,000 mopeds and motorcycles produced alongside 350,000 bicycles.
Puch's large-displacement motor scooters of the late 1950s, with 125cc and later 150cc two-stroke engines and three-speed gearboxes, earned a reputation for reliability and were popular for daily commuting across Europe. The company also produced the 250 SGS motorcycle — sold in the United States through Sears catalogues as the "Twingle" — with the split-single engine layout that had defined Puch's engineering identity for decades. A total of 38,584 SGS 250 motorcycles were made between 1953 and 1970.
In 1979, a joint venture with Mercedes-Benz led to Puch building the Mercedes-Benz G-Class in Graz, a contract that has continued to the present day under successor company Magna Steyr. Puch also provided the four-wheel drive mechanics for the Fiat Panda 4x4 Mk1 from 1983.
By the late 1980s, intensifying competition squeezed the two-wheeler business. A major 1987 restructuring ended two-wheeler production in Graz. The Puch motorcycle division was sold to Piaggio — maker of the Vespa — in 1987. When Piaggio's bicycle division was sold to the Swedish Grimaldi Industri group in 1997, Puch became part of Cycleurope. In 2011, Austrian entrepreneur Josef Faber took control of the Puch bicycle brand. Puch moped production had already transferred: when the Maxi Plus line ended in Austria, the entire production line was sold to India's Hero Motors, which produced the Hero Puch from 1988 until 2003.
Puch's technical influence spread through the two-wheeler world via its licensing agreements with Tomos in Yugoslavia (from 1954) and through the Puch Maxi's enormous reach across European and North American markets. The green-and-white chequered badge, derived from the colours of the Steyr town flag, remains associated with durable, engineer-focused machinery. The Johann-Puch-Museum in Graz preserves the company's heritage, while the Einser-Werk assembly hall was declared a protected industrial monument when Graz became European Capital of Culture in 2003.