In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a wager of £20,000 (equivalent to £2.3 million in 2023) set by his friends at the Reform Club.

On the morning of 2 October 1872, having dismissed his valet for bringing him shaving water at a temperature slightly lower than expected, Fogg hires Frenchman Jean Passepartout as a replacement.

That evening, while at the Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Morning Chronicle (or The Daily Telegraph in some editions) stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days.

With Passepartout accompanying him, Fogg departs from London by train at 8:45 p.m.; to win the wager, he must return to the club by this same time on 21 December, 80 days later.

While disembarking in Egypt, they are watched by a Scotland Yard policeman, Detective Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of James Strand, a bank robber.

They arrive in Bombay on 20 October, two days ahead of schedule, and board a train heading towards Calcutta that evening.

The early arrival in Bombay proves beneficial for Fogg and Passepartout, as contrary to what the newspaper article had said, an 80 km (50 mi) stretch of track from Kholby to Allahabad has not yet been built.

In Hong Kong, the group learns Aouda's distant relative, in whose care they had been planning to leave her, has moved to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe.

Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey but instead support him in getting back to Britain, where he can arrest him.

The companions arrive at Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, take the train to Dublin and then a ferry to Liverpool, still in time to reach London before the deadline.

It was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) in which Verne was conscripted as a coastguard; he was having financial difficulties (his previous works were not paid royalties); his father had died recently; and he had witnessed a public execution, which had disturbed him.

[6] The technological innovations of the 19th century had opened the possibility of rapid circumnavigation, and the prospect fascinated Verne and his readership.

In particular, three technological breakthroughs occurred in 1869–1870 that made a tourist-like around-the-world journey possible for the first time: the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in America (1869), the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), and the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870).

It sparked the imagination that anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, a feat previously reserved for only the most heroic and hardy of adventurers.

[7] The story was published in installments over the next 45 days, with its ending timed to synchronize Fogg's December 21 deadline with the real world.

It is unknown if Verne submitted to their requests, but the descriptions of some rail and shipping lines leave some suspicion he was influenced.

Consequently, it is unlikely he would fail to notice that the departure dates of the transcontinental train in San Francisco and of the China steamer in New York were one day earlier than his travel diary.

In early 1870, the Erie Railway Company published a statement of routes, times, and distances detailing a trip around the globe of 38,204 km (23,739 mi) in 77 days and 21 hours.

In interviews in 1894 and 1904, Verne says the source was "through reading one day in a Paris cafe" and "due merely to a tourist advertisement seen by chance in the columns of a newspaper."

[6] The periodical Le Tour du monde (3 October 1869) contained a short piece titled "Around the World in Eighty Days", which refers to 230 km (140 mi) of the railway not yet completed between Allahabad and Bombay, a central point in Verne's work.

[6] A possible inspiration was the traveller George Francis Train, who made four trips around the world, including one in 80 days in 1870.

"[6] Regarding the idea of gaining a day, Verne said of its origin: "I have a great number of scientific odds and ends in my head.

Verne cited an 1872 article in Nature, and Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841), which was also based on going around the world and the difference in a day linked to a marriage at the end.