Piaggio designed the P.23R specifically to break speed records for commercial transport aircraft.

It was a three-engine low-wing cantilever monoplane with twin tail fins and rudders.

The three 671-kilowatt (900-horsepower) Isotta Fraschini Asso ("Ace") XI R V-12 engines were mounted in aerodynamically clean, sleek cowlings and each drove a three-bladed propeller.

During World War II, however, Allied aircraft recognition manuals erroneously identified it as a possible Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) bomber.

Although confusingly numbered as if it were a variant of the Piaggio P.23 commercial transport prototype of 1935, the P.23R was in fact an entirely new design.