The German automobile manufacturer/brand BMW has been involved in Formula One in a number of capacities since the inauguration of the World Drivers' Championship in 1950. The company entered occasional races in the 1950s and 1960s (often under Formula Two regulations), before building the BMW M12/13 inline-four turbocharged engine in the 1980s. This engine was the result of a deal between BMW and Brabham, which resulted in the team's chassis being powered by BMW engines from 1982 until 1987, a period in which Nelson Piquet won the 1983 championship driving a Brabham BT52-BMW. BMW also supplied the M12/13 on a customer basis to the ATS, Arrows, Benetton and Ligier teams during this period, with various degrees of success. In 1988, Brabham temporarily withdrew from the sport and BMW withdrew its official backing from the engines, which were still used by the Arrows team under the Megatron badge. Turbocharged engines were banned by the revised Formula One Technical Regulations for 1989, rendering the M12/13 obsolete.

BMW decided to return to Formula One in the late 1990s by signing an exclusive contract with the Williams team, which needed a new long-term engine supplier after the withdrawal of Renault in 1997. The programme resulted in the creation of a new V10 engine which made its race début in the Williams FW22 in 2000. The following year saw the partnership move from the midfield to challenging for race victories, but the desired championship remained elusive due to the dominance of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari in the first half of the 2000s. By 2005, the relationship between BMW and Williams had deteriorated, and BMW chose to part company and buy the rival Sauber team outright.

The BMW Sauber project lasted from 2006 until 2009, and resulted in a substantial increase in competitiveness for the Swiss former privateer team. Two podium finishes in the first year were followed by a solid third in the Constructors' Championship in 2007 (which became second when McLaren was disqualified). In 2008, Robert Kubica won the team's only race, the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix, and led the Drivers' Championship at one point, but the team chose to focus on development of its 2009 car and slipped back in the standings by the end of the season. The 2009 season was a major disappointment as the F1.09 chassis proved uncompetitive. Combined with the global financial recession and the company's frustration about the limitations of the contemporary technical regulations in developing technology relevant to road cars, BMW chose to withdraw from the sport, selling the team back to its founder, Peter Sauber.

The early years of the post-war World Drivers' Championship saw private BMW racing cars, based on the pre-war BMW 328 chassis, entered in the 1952 and 1953 German Grands Prix. BMW-derived cars were also entered by the Alex von Falkenhausen Motorenbau (AFM) and Veritas companies in occasional races from 1951 to 1953. The entries occurred during this period because the championship was effectively run to Formula Two regulations, allowing the BMW cars to take part. Amongst the modified 328s was one driven by an engine in the rear of the car (known as the "Heck", the German automotive term for "back" or "rear"), a design feature which became standard in Formula One in the early 1960s after later success by the Cooper team.

In the 1960s, the Formula One German Grand Prix was often held concurrently with a Formula Two race on the same circuit, allowing BMW F2 cars to take part. In 1967, BMW entered Hubert Hahne in a Lola F2 chassis powered by an enlarged BMW engine which meant that it conformed with the Formula One regulations, while David Hobbs was entered by Lola in the same combination with the standard smaller BMW engine. For the 1968 race, Hahne returned with the previous year's combination and finished tenth, BMW's best result up to this point in its Formula One history. BMW then entered three of its own 269 F2 chassis for the 1969 race, for the trio of Hahne, Gerhard Mitter and Dieter Quester, but Mitter was fatally injured in a practice accident and the remainder of the team withdrew from the race.

Following the commencement in 1977 of Renault's Formula One project with a turbocharged engine and increasing success thereafter, BMW decided to develop its own turbo engine for the sport, a programme which it announced to the media in April 1980. The engine was based on the M10 unit, a four-cylinder, 1.5-litre, normally aspirated engine that had originally been designed in the late 1950s. Its racing derivative, the M12 had also been used in racing throughout the intervening period, winning races in Formula Two and other categories. In 1979 and 1980, BMW provided a fleet of identical M1 cars for Formula One and other professional drivers to race in the BMW M1 Procar Championship, the rounds of which were held during Grand Prix race weekends, thus strengthening the marque's ties with the sport. At the same time, Jochen Neerpasch oversaw the development by Paul Rosche of a prototype 1.4-litre turbo engine, which soon developed 600 bhp at a pressure of 2.8 bar. It was equipped with a single Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch (KKK) turbocharger and Bosch electronics, including fuel injection. This engine formed the basis of the M12/13 design, the race unit that BMW ultimately supplied to five teams from 1982 to 1988.

Initial discussions were held with double World Champion Niki Lauda and McLaren on the subject of a 1980 campaign, but the BMW board denied Neerpasch's request for the programme. Neerpasch then left his position to join the French Talbot marque, which was also planning to enter Formula One, in this case with the Ligier team. Neerpasch had arranged the sale of Rosche's M12/13 engine to Talbot, but Rosche and Neerpasch's successor, Dieter Stappert, successfully protested to their board that such an undertaking deserved full works commitment, particularly as the fact that M12/13 was derived from a production road car engine meant that potential success could be extremely valuable to BMW from a marketing and sales point of view. BMW thus negotiated an exclusive supply of M12/13 engines to the Brabham team.

Testing of the M12/13 got underway in late 1980 with a Brabham BT49 chassis converted to accept the engine. The team's designer, Gordon Murray, designed a new car, the BT50 for the engine, but it was not completed until well into the 1981 season. The BT50 featured a longer wheelbase and a larger fuel cell than the BT49 to accommodate the requirements of the more powerful turbo engine, and was also one of the first Formula One cars to feature onboard telemetry as a means of monitoring the engine's fuel injection. The team's lead driver, Nelson Piquet, tested the BT50 throughout 1981, but the car proved chronically unreliable until Bosch introduced a digital electronic management system at the end of the year, which immediately improved the situation. The BT50 made a solitary race weekend appearance at the 1981 British Grand Prix, where Piquet set a qualifying time 0.7 seconds slower than his effort in the Cosworth DFV-powered BT49. The BT50 handled poorly but recorded 192 miles per hour (309 km/h) through the speed trap, some 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) faster than the BT49. Meanwhile, Brabham won the Drivers' Championship with Piquet, who drove the BT49 throughout the season.