Ferrari Logo: The Prancing Horse

Ferrari logo meaning: what the Prancing Horse stands for

The Ferrari logo meaning comes down to a person and a place, so the Ferrari symbol is a tribute, not an abstract design. The black horse was the emblem of World War I pilot Francesco Baracca, and the canary yellow is the color of Modena, Enzo Ferrari’s home city.

The Ferrari emblem comes in two shapes, a shield with the letters SF and a rectangle with the word Ferrari, and both carry the same horse, yellow and flag.

In Enzo’s own account, the horse stood for good fortune, the reason the pilot’s mother gave when she offered it. Logo sites often add speed, power and victory, but that is a later reading, not Ferrari’s explanation.

Element	Where it comes from	What it stands for
Black prancing horse	The pilot’s aircraft emblem, itself a nod to his old cavalry regiment	His memory and, in his mother’s words, good luck
Canary-yellow field	Added by the racing team in 1932	Modena, Enzo Ferrari’s home city
Green, white and red band	Added in 1932	Italy
Letters S and F (shield only)	The racing team’s initials	Scuderia Ferrari
Word “Ferrari” (rectangle only)	The car company’s badge, from 1947	The maker, named after its founder
Horse facing left, tail up	Ferrari’s own changes to the original drawing	Enzo’s design rule, with no hidden message

Ferrari logo colors: yellow, black and the Italian tricolor

Each color in the Ferrari symbol has a documented source: black from the pilot, yellow from Modena and the tricolor from the Italian flag.

The pilot’s old regiment used a silver horse, and he painted his black so it would stand out on the side of his plane. Enzo later said the horse “was and remained black” and that the canary yellow was his own addition. Both the yellow and the tricolor were on the badge when it first raced in 1932, so claims that the yellow arrived in 1945 are wrong. Red, or rosso corsa, is the traditional color of the cars, not of the logo.

Why is there a horse on the Ferrari logo?

1. 1917–1918
2. 1932–Present
3. 1947–Present
4. 1953–1961
5. 2002–Present
6. 1947–Present

There is a horse on the Ferrari logo because the parents of Francesco Baracca offered it to Enzo Ferrari in 1923. The Prancing Horse had been the personal emblem of their son, an Italian World War I flying ace, and his mother said it would bring Enzo luck.

Baracca first used the horse in 1917, when his squadron let pilots paint personal symbols on their aircraft, and carried it on his SPAD fighter. In a letter to his mother dated April 27, 1918, he called it a tribute to his former cavalry regiment, Piemonte Reale, which had used a horse since 1692. He was killed later in 1918.

In 1923 Enzo won the Circuito del Savio near Ravenna and then met the pilot’s parents, Count Enrico Baracca and Countess Paolina Biancoli, who suggested the horse for his cars. Enzo also said he had admired the ace since boyhood and loved Giovanni Pascoli’s poem “La cavalla storna.”

He waited nine years to use it. Enzo set up Scuderia Ferrari in Modena in 1929 to race Alfa Romeos, and the horse first appeared on the team’s cars in 1932. After World War II, Ferrari played down its wartime roots.

Is the Ferrari logo lucky, then? In its founding story, luck was the whole point.

Baracca’s horse vs the Ferrari horse: what changed, and the myths

Ferrari kept the black horse but changed what surrounds it, and turned the tail upward, a pose that is anatomically wrong for a horse on its hind legs.

Feature	The pilot’s horse (1917–1918)	Ferrari’s Prancing Horse (from 1932)
Field	White	Canary yellow
Tail	Pointing down	Curled up
Frame	None, painted straight onto the plane	Shield or rectangle with the Italian tricolor on top
Where it appeared	The side of his SPAD fighter	Race cars from 1932, Ferrari road cars from 1947

Two popular stories don’t hold up. One says the ace copied the horse from a German pilot from Stuttgart he had shot down. There is no evidence for it, the Baracca Museum holds no documents that support it, and he himself credited his regiment. The other says the horse was red and was painted black in mourning, but the museum says it was already black in his lifetime. The family added it to its coat of arms only after his death.

Why does Ferrari have two logos? The Ferrari badge and the Scuderia shield

Ferrari has two logos because it is both a racing team and a carmaker. The pointed shield with the letters SF belongs to Scuderia Ferrari, the racing team, and dates from 1932. The rectangle with the word Ferrari is the badge of the car company and dates from 1947.

Neither replaced the other, and both are in use today. The official Ferrari car logo is the rectangle, the badge on the cars built in Maranello. The shield is the racing emblem, which is why the Formula 1 team wears it, and Ferrari also fits it to the front fenders of some road cars.

Shape	Letters	Stands for	Used since	Where you see it
Pointed shield	S F	The racing team	1932	Race cars, team branding, front fenders of some road cars
Vertical rectangle	Ferrari	The car company	1947	The nose of Ferrari road cars, company branding

Both carry the black Prancing Horse facing left, the canary-yellow field and the tricolor band. Only the shape and the lettering differ.

Ferrari logo history: every version since 1932

The Ferrari logo history is short on redesigns. Ferrari logos through the years come down to two designs, the 1932 racing shield and the 1947 rectangular badge, plus one careful restyle in 2002. Many logo sites show a new version every decade, but no Ferrari or encyclopedic source backs those eras.

Version	Years	What changed	First use
The pilot’s aircraft emblem (not a Ferrari logo)	1917–1918	Black horse on white, tail down, no frame	His SPAD fighter
Racing shield	1932–today	Yellow shield, tricolor on top, tail up, S and F	Alfa Romeo 8C 2300s at the Spa 24 Hours, July 9, 1932
Rectangular Ferrari badge	1947–today	Straight-edged rectangle, slimmer horse, the word Ferrari in place of SF	Ferrari 125 S, 1947
Restyled shield and rectangle	2002–today	Corrected horse outline, retuned yellow, new dot on the “i”, no black lines between the flag stripes	Today’s logos

1917–1929: Baracca’s horse before Ferrari

In 1929 a pamphlet from the pilot’s family already drew the horse inside a shield with an upturned tail, very close to Ferrari’s later design. Milan engraver Eligio Gerosa also drew a version for an organization connected to the ace. Neither was a Ferrari logo.

1932: the first Scuderia Ferrari shield

The original Ferrari logo first raced on July 9, 1932, at the Spa 24 Hours, on the team’s Alfa Romeo 8C 2300s, which dominated the race. That year it also went on team stationery and on a motorcycle entered at the Circuito di Pontedera.

The design set the pattern still used today: a pointed yellow shield, the tricolor across the top, the horse facing left with its tail up, and S and F at the bottom. Many sites date this shield to 1929, the year the team was founded, but the horse first raced in 1932. So the first cars to wear it were Alfa Romeo racers, 15 years before any car carried the Ferrari name.

1939–1945: Auto Avio Costruzioni, a company without the horse

On September 13, 1939, Enzo founded Auto Avio Costruzioni in Modena, bound by a non-compete deal with Alfa Romeo. While trading as Auto Avio Costruzioni (1939–1945), Enzo could not use the Ferrari name, and the 815 did not carry a Ferrari badge. The winged-horse medallion some logo sites show for these years is poorly documented and was not a Ferrari logo in any case.

1947: the rectangular Ferrari badge

In 1945, as the company took the Ferrari name, Enzo worked with Gerosa on a new horse. His brief: no curves, which reminded him of Bugatti grilles, and the horse must always face left.

The result was a straight-edged vertical rectangle with the tricolor on top, a slimmer horse and the name Ferrari where the shield had SF. It debuted in 1947 on the 125 S, the first Ferrari car, which first raced on May 11, 1947, at Piacenza. So the first logo Ferrari put on its own cars was this rectangle.

1950s–1990s: small refinements, not redesigns

The rectangle has stayed essentially the same since 1947. If an old Ferrari logo from the 1960s or 1980s looks slightly different, blame the badge maker, the material or the photo. The 1951, 1960, 1981 and 2005 “redesigns” on logo sites have no source.

One real side badge did appear: from 1953 to 1961, Ferrari and coachbuilder Farina shared two crossed nautical flags, with a red diamond on white for F. When the firm became Pininfarina, a P flag (white rectangle on blue) replaced the second one.

2002–today: the current Ferrari logo

Is there a new Ferrari logo? Not since 2002. According to Italian design press, that year the Seidlcluss agency restyled both versions without changing their layout. It corrected the Prancing Horse’s outline and legs, adjusted the yellow, reshaped the dot on the “i” and removed the thin black lines between the green, white and red stripes. Some sites date that last change to 2010, but 2002 is the better-supported year.

Where the Ferrari logo appears on a car

On a Ferrari road car, the rectangular badge is the Ferrari car logo on the nose, and a pair of racing shields may sit on the front fenders. The Prancing Horse is repeated inside and out, and the exact placement of the Ferrari logo on car exteriors and interiors depends on the model and the options chosen.

• Nose: the rectangular Prancing Horse badge at the front of the hood.
• Front fenders: a Scuderia Ferrari shield on each side. The Ferrari symbol on car fenders is often an option rather than standard equipment.
• Tail: the Ferrari script, a stand-alone horse, or both.
• Steering wheel: a horse at the center of the wheel.
• Wheels: the Ferrari emblem on the center caps.
• Seats: a horse embossed or embroidered on the headrests, typically as an option.

Ferrari vs Porsche logo: is it the same horse?

No. The Ferrari-Porsche logo likeness is real, since both show a black rearing horse on a yellow field, but the two horses have separate origins. Ferrari’s Prancing Horse comes from an Italian World War I pilot. Porsche’s horse comes from the coat of arms of Stuttgart, the city where Porsche was founded and is still based.

Stuttgart’s horse comes from the city’s name, which grew out of “Stuotgarten,” a stud farm founded around 950, and Porsche put it at the center of the crest it has used since 1952. The shared yellow is a coincidence of heraldry too: gold is the field of Stuttgart’s arms, while Ferrari’s yellow is the color of Modena. The story of a German pilot from Stuttgart would link the Ferrari and Porsche logo origins, but as noted above, there is no evidence for it.

Ferrari logo vs Porsche logo at a glance:

	Ferrari	Porsche
Origin	A World War I pilot’s aircraft emblem	Stuttgart city arms
First on a car	1932, the team’s Alfa Romeos at Spa	End of 1952, on the Porsche 356 steering wheel
Horse	Black, facing left, tail curled up, standing free	Black, rearing, on a small inner shield under the word STUTTGART
Background	Canary yellow (Modena)	Gold (Stuttgart)
Other elements	Italian tricolor, SF or “Ferrari”	PORSCHE across the top, six antlers, red-and-black stripes
Shape	Pointed shield or vertical rectangle	Quartered crest

Ferrari, Lamborghini and Mustang logos: other horses and a bull

The Ferrari-Lamborghini logo mix-up is common, but only Ferrari’s logo is a horse. Lamborghini uses a charging bull, and the Ford Mustang uses a running horse without a shield. A few other badges borrowed Ferrari’s horse directly.

• Lamborghini: a charging bull for Ferruccio Lamborghini’s zodiac sign, Taurus, so the Ferrari-Lamborghini logo difference comes down to horse versus bull. A famous but unproven story says a remark from Enzo Ferrari pushed him to build cars.
• Ford Mustang: a galloping horse seen from the side, introduced with the car in 1964 and never set in a shield.
• Ducati: engineer Fabio Taglioni used Ferrari’s horse on motorcycles, with permission from the pilot’s mother, through 1961.
• North American Racing Team: a Ferrari variant with the US flag above the horse and the team’s initials below.

Steinwinter also used a rearing horse derived from Stuttgart’s, and there is even a “prancing moose” Volvo parody. See more car logos with horses.

The Ferrari wordmark and font

The word Ferrari on the badge is custom lettering, the company’s own trademark type, not a font you can buy. Its most recognizable detail is the top bar of the “F,” which runs out over the letters that follow it.

The lettering entered the logo on the 1947 rectangle, replacing the SF initials, and it also appears on its own on the cars. Fonts sold as “Ferrari style” imitate it, but none is the original.

Ferrari logo PNG, white and black-and-white versions

The Download button at the top of this page gives you a Ferrari logo PNG of the full-color rectangular badge with a transparent background. That is the version most people need for presentations, mockups and school projects.

The logo also exists in other versions:

• Full-color rectangle: yellow field, tricolor, black horse and the word Ferrari.
• Full-color shield: the racing version with S and F.
• One color: the Ferrari logo in black and white, or a white horse for dark backgrounds, engraving and embroidery.
• Wordmark only: the Ferrari lettering without the horse.

For more yellow car logos and other Italian car brands, see our listings.