The idea for the Scuderia came on the night of 16 November 1929 at a dinner in Bologna, where Ferrari solicited financial backing from textile heirs Augusto and Alfredo Caniato and wealthy amateur racer Mario Tadini. Ferrari himself had raced in Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali and Alfa Romeo cars before the Scuderia's formation. The organisation's distinctive prancing horse blazon first appeared publicly at the 1932 Spa 24 Hours in Belgium, on a two-car team of Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Spiders that finished first and second.
In 1933, Alfa Romeo faced serious financial difficulties and withdrew its own factory team from racing. The Scuderia Ferrari stepped in as the acting works racing team, with Alfa Romeo releasing its current Tipo B Monoposto racers — the P3, considered the first purpose-built single-seater Grand Prix car — to be run by Ferrari's organisation. From its headquarters in Viale Trento e Trieste, Modena, Ferrari managed a roster of over forty drivers at the Scuderia's peak.
The Scuderia's management included Tazio Nuvolari, who delivered what many observers regard as the greatest drive in Grand Prix history at the 1935 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, defeating the superior Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union Silver Arrows machinery in an Alfa Romeo P3. Other notable drivers managed by Scuderia Ferrari in this period included Guy Moll, Carlo Maria Pintacuda, and Antonio Brivio.
In 1935, Enzo Ferrari and engineer Luigi Bazzi built the Alfa Romeo Bimotore, a twin-engined special — the first car to wear a Ferrari badge on the radiator cowl, though the car itself was an Alfa Romeo derivative.
Alfa Romeo bought the shares of Scuderia Ferrari in 1937. From 1 January 1938, official racing activity transferred to Alfa Corse, a new internal racing department established in buildings erected next to the Alfa factory at Portello, Milan. Enzo Ferrari was appointed manager of Alfa Corse, but disagreed with the structural changes this entailed. He was dismissed by Alfa Romeo in 1939 when racing activities were suspended.
In October 1939, Ferrari left Alfa Romeo and founded Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, a machine tools and engineering company. A condition of his departure agreement with Alfa prohibited use of the Ferrari name on racing cars for four years. During the winter of 1939 to 1940, Ferrari oversaw the design of two racing cars under the designation Tipo 815 — eight cylinders, 1.5-litre displacement — by engineer Alberto Massimino. These were the first true Ferrari cars. Alberto Ascari and the Marchese Lotario Rangoni Machiavelli di Modena drove them in the 1940 Mille Miglia before the Second World War ended racing activities.
In 1943 Ferrari moved his manufacturing base to Maranello, where it was bombed in November 1944 and February 1945. After the war, Ferrari rebuilt the Maranello works and constructed the first genuinely Ferrari-badged racing cars.
Scuderia Ferrari's prewar decade shaped European Grand Prix racing. As the body through which Alfa Romeo competed at its highest level, it fielded some of the most celebrated drivers of the era and achieved wins against the formidable German Silver Arrows at a time when state subsidies gave Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union enormous development advantages. The Scuderia's origins in Modena, its use of the prancing horse symbol, and Enzo Ferrari's determination to compete on equal terms with far better-funded rivals established the foundations of what became the most successful constructor in Formula One history.