Nike, originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports, was founded by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman in January 1964. The company initially operated as a distributor for Japanese shoe maker Onitsuka Tiger, making most sales at track meets out of Knight's car. Many top Oregon runners began wearing the shoes, and the shoe's popularity grew quickly because of Kennan Meyer. The company's first self-designed product was based on Bowerman's "chicken and waffle" design in which the sole of the shoe was made by the pattern of a waffle iron.

The company's profits grew quickly, and in 1966, BRS opened its first retail store, located on Trenton Ave., with the relationship between BRS and Onitsuka Tiger nearing an end, BRS prepared to launch its own line of footwear, which would bear the newly designed Swoosh.

The first shoe to carry this design that was sold to the public was a soccer cleat named "Nike", which was released in the summer of 1971. In February 1972, BRS introduced its first line of Nike shoes, with the name Nike derived from the Greek goddess of victory. In 1978, BRS, Inc. officially renamed itself to Nike, Inc. Beginning with Ilie Nastase, the first professional athlete to sign with BRS/Nike, the sponsorship of athletes became a key marketing tool for the rapidly growing company.

By 1980, Nike had reached a 50% market share in the United States athletic shoe market, and the company went public in December of that year. Its growth was due largely to 'word-of-foot' advertising (to quote a Nike print ad from the late 1970s), rather than television ads. Nike's first national television commercials ran in October of 1982 during the broadcast of the New York Marathon. The ads were created by Portland-based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, which had formed several months earlier in April 1982.

Together, Nike and Wieden+Kennedy have created many indelible print and television ads and the agency continues to be Nike's primary today. It was agency co-founder Dan Wieden who coined the now-famous slogan "Just Do It" for a 1988 Nike ad campaign, which was chosen by Advertising Age as one of the top five ad slogans of the 20th Century, and the campaign has been enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution.

Throughout the 1980s, Nike expanded its product line to include many other sports and regions throughout the world.

On 23 October 2007, it was announced that the sports apparel supplier Umbro, known as the manufacturers of the England national football team's kits, had agreed to be bought by Nike in a deal said to be worth £285 million (~$600m).

Nike produces a wide range of sports equipment. Their first products were track running shoes. They currently also make shoes, jerseys, shorts, baselayers etc. for a wide range of sports including track & field, American football, baseball, tennis, Association football, lacrosse, basketball and cricket. The most recent additions to their line are the Nike 6.0 and Nike SB shoes, designed for skateboarding. Nike has recently introduced cricket shoes, called Air Zoom Yorker, designed to be 30% lighter than their competitors'. In 2008, Nike introduced the Air Jordan XX3, a high performance basketball shoe designed with the environment in mind.[Nike positions its products in such a way as to try to appeal to a "youthful....materialistic crowd". It is positioned as a premium performance brand. However, it also engineers shoes for discount stores like Wal-Mart under the Starter brand.

Nike sells a huge assortment of products, including shoes and apparel for sports activities like association football, basketball, running, combat sports, tennis, American football, athletics, golfand cross training for men, women, and children. Nike also sells shoes for outdoor activities such as tennis, golf, skateboarding, association football, baseball, American football, cycling, volleyball, wrestling, cheerleading, aquatic activities, auto racing and other athletic and recreational uses. Nike is well known and popular in Youth culture, Chav Culture and Hip hop culture as they supply urban fashion clothing. Nike recently teamed up with Apple Inc. to produce the Nike+ product which monitors a runner's performance via a radio device in the shoe which links to the iPod nano. While the product generates useful statistics, it has been criticized by researchers who were able to identify users' RFID devices from 60 feet away using small, concealable intelligence motes in a wireless sensor network