It was started in 1996 by Cyrille Guimard, the former manager of Bernard Hinault, Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon of the Renault–Elf–Gitane team of the 1980s.

Cyrille Guimard started the team in 1996 with backing from François Migraine, the chief executive of Cofidis.

Vandenbroucke's Belgian compatriots, Nico Mattan, Chris Peers, Peter Farazijn, and Jo Planckaert, stayed on but were criticised for inconsistent performances.

Cofidis, on the demand of Migraine, began paying riders by results, judged by the points they won in a season-long competition run by the Union Cycliste Internationale.

In 2004 Cofidis had three world champions – Igor Astarloa on the road, David Millar in the individual time trial and Laurent Gané on the track.

[4] Moncoutié won on Bastille day again in the 2005 Tour de France – the only French stage win – with O'Grady's help.

On 25 July 2007 Cofidis rider Cristian Moreni failed his doping test after the 11th stage of the Tour de France.

[7] A few days before the start of the race, Boyer was sacked as manager of the team, with Migraine blaming him for poor results: he was replaced by former Festina, Astana and FDJ–BigMat directeur sportif Yvon Sanquer.

[10] For the 2015 season the team announced it had signed 2014 Giro d'Italia points classification winner, Nacer Bouhanni, along with Dominique Rollin, Geoffrey Soupe and Steve Chainel.