Olympique de Marseille was founded in 1899 in France's oldest major port city, initially as a multi-sport club with rugby as its primary sport. Football gradually took over, and Marseille won their first Coupe de France in 1924, three years before the professional Ligue 1 competition even existed. They claimed their first league title in 1936/37 and by the 1970s had become one of the dominant forces in French football, winning back-to-back titles in 1971 and 1972. The second was mostly won by Croatian striker Josip Skoblar, who scored 44 league goals in 1970/71, a Ligue 1 record that still stands. The defining era came under businessman Bernard Tapie in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Marseille won four consecutive Ligue 1 titles and, on 26 May 1993 in Munich, beat AC Milan 1-0 with a Basile Boli header to become the first French club to win the UEFA Champions League. The title was tainted by a match-fixing scandal involving a Ligue 1 game against Valenciennes before the final, which resulted in the domestic championship being stripped and the club being relegated to Ligue 2 in 1994, though the Champions League trophy was never taken away.
The 2024/25 season was one of Marseille's strongest in over a decade, finishing 2nd in Ligue 1 with 65 points and qualifying directly for the Champions League group stage. Under Roberto De Zerbi, the club scored 74 goals across 34 league games, the second highest tally in the division behind PSG. It was also the club's 125th anniversary season, marked by the release of a special commemorative shirt by Puma.
Puma has manufactured Marseille's kits since 2018, ending a 22-year partnership with Adidas. The home shirt has been white for almost the entirety of the club's existence, making it one of the most consistent colour identities in European football. Sky blue is the secondary colour, appearing in the crest, collar, cuffs, and trim, with navy used as a tertiary accent. Puma regularly references the city and the Mediterranean coast in their design choices for OM, incorporating textures inspired by the coastal rocks of Massalia, the Greek port settlement that Marseille was built upon, as well as flags from the Stade Vélodrome's terrace culture.
