Coatit was part of an international fleet sent to Constantinople when the city appeared to be at risk of falling to the Bulgarian Army during the First Balkan War.

Through the 1880s and 1890s, the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) had built a series of torpedo cruisers in a brief experiment with the doctrine of the Jeune École under the direction of Benedetto Brin.

The Jeune École theory argued that small, cheap torpedo-armed vessels would replace the large and expensive ironclad warships that had dominated naval doctrine since the 1860s.

By the time of their construction, the Jeune École was no longer in vogue, and so they were intended to serve as scouts for Italy's fleet of pre-dreadnought battleships.

[4][5] In 1904, the ship was transferred to the Red Sea and stationed in Italy's colony in Eritrea along with the corvette Cristoforo Colombo, the gunboat Volturno, and the aviso Galileo[6] Coatit was assigned to the hostile force that was tasked with simulating an attempt to land troops on Sicily during the 1908 fleet maneuvers.

Coatit, the armored cruiser Varese, and sixteen destroyers were tasked with patrolling the flanks of the bombardment force to prevent a surprise attack by the Ottoman Navy, which did not materialize.

[8] On 15 October, Coatit and her sister joined the battleship Napoli, the armored cruisers Pisa, Amalfi, and San Marco, three destroyers, and several troop transports for an attack on the port of Derna.

She thereafter shelled an Ottoman infantry battalion in the area, which fled; she nevertheless continued to fire on the retreating troops, expending around 200 rounds during the attack.

The ships put a force of about 3,000 men ashore to protect their nationals, though by the end of the month, the Bulgarian advance on the city had been halted.

Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, the Italian naval chief of staff, believed that Austro-Hungarian submarines could operate too effectively in the narrow waters of the Adriatic, which could also be easily seeded with minefields.

Instead, Revel decided to implement blockade at the relatively safer southern end of the Adriatic with the main fleet, while smaller vessels, such as the MAS boats, conducted raids on Austro-Hungarian ships and installations.