The championship was mostly concentrated in Europe, but throughout the years has visited other continents including Asia and South America.

Both categories are based on production road car designs, which must be produced in a minimum quantity of 25 examples to qualify.

GT3 cars are even closer to their production counterparts and are very simply racetrack prepared with the essentials (rollcages for safety, stripped interiors, race spec fuel tanks, etc.).

In 1997, due to increasing interest from manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Panoz, the FIA took over control of the expanding BPR Global GT Series, standardizing the race-length at 500 km instead of the usual four hours, liberalizing the technical regulations and leaving commercial exploitation in the hands of one of BPR's founders, Stéphane Ratel, who managed to get TV support from the pan-European TV station Eurosport.

This left Chrysler's Viper to become the dominating car in the series, with the aging Porsche 993 GT2 and the Lister Storm providing a certain degree of competition.

The FIA also banned official manufacturer involvement, although certain teams had preferential treatment, with Porsche establishing a "round robin" system.

While this was made to accommodate the Saleen S7, the biggest beneficiary was the purpose-built Maserati MC12, which led the FIA to impose aerodynamic limitations on the Italian car.

This meant that the San Luis round of the 2011 season was the last time GT1 cars contested in international motorsport.

Michael Bartels and Andrea Bertolini, both driving for Vitaphone, earned their third Drivers' Championship titles in the past four seasons.