The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. The largest annual international team competition in sports, the Davis Cup is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested between teams of players from competing countries in a knock-out format. The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between Great Britain and the United States.

In 2005, 134 nations entered teams into the competition. The most successful countries over the history of the tournament are the United States (winning 32 tournaments and finishing as runners-up 29 times) and Australia (winning 28 times and finishing second 19 times and also winning on four occasions with New Zealand under the name 'Australasia'). The women's equivalent of the Davis Cup is the Fed Cup.

The tournament was conceived in 1899 by four members of the Harvard University tennis team who wished to challenge the British to a tennis competition. Once their respective lawn tennis associations agreed, one of the four Harvard players, Dwight F. Davis, designed a tournament format and ordered an appropriate sterling silver trophy from Shreve, Crump & Low, purchasing it from his own funds.

They in turn commissioned a classically-styled design from William B. Durgin's of Concord, New Hampshire, crafted by the Englishman Rowland Rhodes. Davis went on to become a prominent politician in the United States in the 1920s, serving as US Secretary of War from 1925-29 and as Governor-General of the Philippines from 1929-32.

The first match, between the United States and Great Britain was held at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston, Massachusetts in 1900. The American team, of which Dwight Davis was a part, surprised the British by winning the first three matches. The following year the two countries did not compete but the US won the next match in 1902.

By 1905 the tournament expanded to include Belgium, Austria, France, and Australasia, a combined team from Australia and New Zealand that competed together until 1914.

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