In 1709, Sir Godfrey Copley, the MP for Thirsk, bequeathed Abraham Hill and Hans Sloane £100 (roughly equivalent to £17,156 in 2023[8]) to be held in trust for the Royal Society "for improving natural knowledge to be laid out in experiments or otherwise for the benefit thereof as they shall direct and appoint".

[9][10] In 1726, following a proposal by Sloane, the grants were extended to "strangers" unaffiliated with the Society to encourage "new and useful experiments," though it was only five years later that Stephen Gray became the first such recipient.

[11] In November 1736, Martin Folkes, then vice-president of the Society, suggested the Copley grant be converted to "a medal or other honorary prize to be bestowed on the person whose experiment should be best approved...a laudable emulation might be excited among men of genius to try their invention, who in all probability may never be moved for the sake of lucre".

On 7 December 1736, the Council of the Royal Society agreed to Folkes' proposal, passing a resolution that the annual Copley grant of five pounds (roughly equivalent to £986 in 2023[8]) be converted to a gold medal "of the same Value, with the Arms of the Society impress’d on it," to be gifted "for the best Experiment produced within the Year, and bestowed in such a manner as to avoid any Envy or Disgust in Rivalship".

[9] During the long presidency of Joseph Banks, the medal was frequently awarded to recipients whose researches were of a practical or technical nature, involving improvements to scientific equipment or instrument design.

[9] In 1831, new regulations adopted by the Royal Society Council made the medal an annual award, dropped the requirement for conducting the qualifying research within a certain period and officially opened it to scientists from any nation; although the medal had previously been awarded to foreign scientists including Alessandro Volta, the majority of recipients had been British subjects.

Edward Delaval and Henry Cavendish "For his Experiments and Observations on the agreement between the specific gravities of the several Metals, and their colours when united to glass, as well as those of their other preparations.

(Poisson)" "For his discoveries relating to the structure of the liver, as detailed in his paper communicated to the Royal Society, and published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1833.