Brazil Serie A

Charles Miller introduced Brazil to football association rules to Brazil in 1894 upon his return from England, where he attended college and discovered the sport, and it soon became popular in the country. In 1902 Miller helped to organize the Liga Paulista de Foot-Ball (current Campeonato Paulista), Brazil's first football league. The league only played in the area of the State of São Paulo. Due the size of Brazil, economic and geographical challenges, and lack of transport infraestructure, the creation of a fully national league or championship was almost impossible. Instead the rest of Brazil followed São Paulo's example and founded state football leagues for each of the federative units of Brazil. The state leagues remained the main and most prestigious championships, and were considered the equivalent of national leagues of other countries.

As the sport grew in size, the local state federations and the recently created Confederação Brasileira de Desportos (CBD) started to organize a number of different interstate and regional tournaments. The most popular form of competition in a national level was the Campeonato Brasileiro de Seleções Estaduais (Brazilian Championship of State Teams), a tournament formed by Seleções, teams formed by the best representatives from each state of Brazil (a concept similar to national teams).

One of the first experiences of organizing a club championship at national level was the Torneio dos Campeões de 1920 [pt], competed between the winners of the Campeonato Paulista (Paulistano), Campeonato Carioca (Fluminense) and Campeonato Gaúcho (Brasil de Pelotas). A second edition was done in the 1937 Torneios dos Campeões, won by Atlético Mineiro. It was the first with fully professional clubs. In August 2023, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) officially recognized the tournament as a Brazilian championship, thus conferring to Atlético Mineiro the status of first national champions of Brazil.

The Taça Brasil was introduced in 1959, and ran until 1968. The Taça Brasil was created to select a representative for the newly created Copa Libertadores de América, and it was intended to become Brazil's new national competition, replacing the Campeonato Brasileiro de Seleções Estaduais. The Taça Brasil was a pure single-elimination tournament, with the participants selected from the champions of the state championships.

In 1967, the Torneio Rio–São Paulo was expanded to include teams from other states of Brazil. Thus becoming the Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa nicknamed the Robertão by fans and media. Differently from the Taça Brasil, the Robertão was competed with a round-robin system, with two groups in the first stage, and a quadrangular with the two best teams of each group on the final stage. It was competed for between 1967 and 1970. In 2010 the CBF announced that these were to be regarded as Brazilian championships.

In 1968, the delay in closing the 1968 Taça Brasil made CBD use the Robertão to determine the Libertadores representatives. With the extinction of the Taça Brasil, the Robertão, officially named by CBD as "Taça de Prata" (Silver Cup) remained the top Brazilian championship the following two years.

Following Brazil's third world title at the 1970 FIFA World Cup, president Emílio Médici decided to better organize Brazilian football. In a reunion with the CBD and the club presidents in October 1970, it was decided to create the following year a Brazilian championship contested by twenty teams, inspired by the national tournaments in the European nations. The first edition of the named "Campeonato Nacional" ("National Championship"), was held in 1971. The top division was named "Divisão Extra" (Extra Division), while a newly created second division earned the "Primeira Divisão" (First Division) name.

In 1987, CBF announced it was not able to organize the Brazilian football championship, a mere few weeks before it was scheduled to begin. As a result, the thirteen most popular football clubs in Brazil created a league, The Clube dos 13, to organize a championship of their own. This tournament was called Copa União and was run by the 16 clubs that eventually took part in it (Santa Cruz, Coritiba and Goiás were invited to join). CBF initially stood by the Club of the 13 decision. However, weeks later, with the competition already underway, and under pressure from football clubs excluded from the Copa União, CBF adopted a new set of rules, which considered the Copa União part of a larger tournament, comprising another 16 teams. According to that new set of rules, the Copa União would be dubbed the Green Module of the CBF championship, whereas the other 16 teams would play the Yellow Module. In the end, the first two teams of each Module would play each other to define the national champions and the two teams that would represent Brazil in the Copa Libertadores in 1988. However, that new set of rules was never recognized by the Club of the 13 and largely ignored by most of the Brazilian media, who concentrated their attention in the independent league, eventually won by Clube de Regatas do Flamengo. The eventual final tourney was set to have Sport and Guarani, from the yellow module, and Flamengo and Internacional from the green one. It never materialized, however, as Flamengo and Internacional refused to partake in it. As a result, Sport and Guarani played each other, with the first one winning the Championship for 1987 and both going on to represent Brazil in the Copa Libertadores in 1988. Although Flamengo has attempted to gain ownership of the championship multiple times through the justice system, Sport remains recognized by both CBF and FIFA as 1987 Champions. Popularly, Flamengo is considered the only Brazilian Champion of 1987, as it faced clubs at the level of the first division of the national championship.

In 2010, CBF decided to recognize the champions of both Taça Brasil (1959–68) and Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa (1967–70) as Brazilian Champions, creating some controversy as there was a two-year period when both tournaments were held, thus Palmeiras was awarded two times for winning both in 1967 and both Santos and Botafogo were recognized as champions in 1968 as each tournament was won by one of them. The CBF's decision was strangely received by Brazilian soccer fans when many supporters understood that it was a political decision.

In August 2023, the CBF declared the Torneio dos Campeões 1937 retroactively a Brazilian championship. The titles of old tournaments, cited in the Brazilian championship history, are equated to the title of Série A, but the tournaments are cataloging with their original name in the statistics (despite being different competitions, they confer the same title).