Following the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, large quantities of the weapon were captured by the Wehrmacht and used during the war under the designation of MG 37(t).

The ZB-53 was designed as a private venture by Václav Holek and Miroslav Rolčík of the Zbrojovka Brno works as a replacement for the Schwarzlose machine gun of World War I origin.

Czechoslovakia exported the gun to Romania, Yugoslavia (1,000 pcs in March-April 1940), Argentina, Afghanistan, Iran and China (large numbers were used during the Second Sino-Japanese War[3]), while UK bought a licence and started to produce its own version, known as the Besa machine gun (over 60,000 pieces made).

It was designed to withstand five minutes of constant fire, after which time the barrel had to be changed due to wear.

Although modern, the weapon was prone to jamming due to a complicated rate of fire selection mechanism.