The Masters was conceived in 1991 to fill the void left by the cancellation of the FIA European Formula Three Cup after the 1990 season. Rather than operating as a standalone championship, the race functioned as an unofficial European F3 showdown, gathering the strongest drivers from British, French, German, Italian, and other national series for a single high-profile weekend. Its international character gave it an authority that no individual national championship could match.
Marlboro served as title sponsor from the event's inception in 1991 through 2005. When the European Union's tobacco advertising ban came into force after 31 July 2005, the Masters lost that backing and subsequently cycled through a series of sponsors: BP Ultimate in 2006 and 2007, RTL in 2008, Tango in 2009, and RTL again in 2010.
Circuit Park Zandvoort hosted the Masters in almost every year of its existence, but noise restrictions in the surrounding area forced two relocations to the Belgian circuit of Zolder, in 2007 and 2008. The race returned to Zandvoort for the 2009 edition and remained there through the end of the series.
David Coulthard was the first Masters champion, winning the inaugural 1991 event. Over the following 25 years the winners' list read as a roll call of future Formula One and endurance racing talent, illustrating the race's reputation as a reliable talent filter.
When the French and German national championships merged into the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2003, the Masters was not initially included on the Euro Series calendar. This omission did not diminish its prestige; drivers from the newly unified series continued to treat the Zandvoort meeting as the season's most prestigious non-championship prize.
In 1999, the FIA designated the Pau round of the French Formula Three Championship as the new official European Cup event. Even so, the Masters retained its informal status as the most competitive international F3 gathering on the continent.
The Masters ran continuously from 1991 to 2016 with the exception of one enforced hiatus. In 2017, FIA Formula 3 European Championship regulations prohibited any racing activity at a circuit in the period before the series' own round at the same venue, making it impossible to hold the independent Masters meeting at Zandvoort that year. The race did not return in 2018, leaving the 2016 edition as the final running of the event.
Over its 25-year lifespan the Masters of Formula 3 occupied a unique position in the junior-formula landscape: a non-championship race that carried championship-level prestige. Its open-invite format, drawing the best drivers from every corner of the European F3 ecosystem to a single venue, made it one of the sport's most reliable talent showcases. The list of former winners who went on to Formula One careers underlines the race's long-standing reputation as one of the truest tests of junior single-seater ability in Europe.