To commemorate their first major success at the prestigious 1948 Mille Miglia, Ferrari upgraded their successful 166 Sport and made a series of cars called the 166 MM. These contributed more than any other previous type, scoring many of Ferrari's first international victories and established the company as a serious manufacturer of sports cars.For their new series, Ferrari outsourced production of the bodies to Touring of Milan who made 25 roadsters using their patented Superleggera technique. It fixed aluminum-alloy panels directly to a tubular space frame which was both light and rigid.

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The Barchetta in March 1948, Ferrari asked Carrozzeria Touring to body his newest series of sports cars. After Felice Bianchi Anderloni died, his son, Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni was left to finish the project. Together with Federico Formenti, they presented a 1:10 scale model which was approved by Enzo Ferrari.The new design used all-enveloping fenders, an egg-crate grill, moustache lines below the lights and a belt line that ran along the side of the car. Journalist Giovanni Canestrini nicknamed the car barchetta which translated to small boat.

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The design was copied by AC for their Ace which evolved into the Shelby Cobra.The prototipo Barchetta was chassis 0002M and other cars of similar shape adopted this name. While each car shared roughly the same shape, they were different in detail. For instance, some cars were fitted with a full interior called 'Lusso'.Ferrari's first coupe was built as on the 166MM chassis. The very first of these was a very unique Zagato Panoramica Speciale built on chassis 0018M. It was closely followed by three Touring Berlinettas made for the 1950 LeMans.​