The club was founded in early 1930 by David Crow, a silk trader from Manchester, England, employed by Jardine, Matheson & Co. Ltd[1] one of the largest trading companies in the Far East at that time.

Its first batch of athletes included nationals from France, Italy, Korea, Peru, Portugal and the United Kingdom, as wells as citizens from Nanjing, Beijing, Chungking (Chongqing), Hangzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou.

According to veteran sports journalist and writer Liu Zhongxian,[2] born in Nanjing, the team was "wildly popular due to the several nationalities of its players" but would only punctuate "as average quality".

The Japanese troops occupied Nanjing in December 1937 and carried out the brutal Nanking massacre, that left very little documentation of the club's history.

In October 2016 the name Nanjing F.C name was brought back to life following the original traditions of bringing together foreigners from more than 20 countries and Chinese as equals.