The America’s Cup is one of the oldest and best-known trophies in international sailing yacht competition. It was first offered as the Hundred Guinea Cup on August 20, 1851, by the Royal Yacht Squadron of Great Britain for a race around the Isle of Wight. The cup was won by the America, a 100-foot (30-metre) schooner from New York City, and subsequently became known as the America’s Cup. The American winners of the cup donated it to the New York Yacht Club in 1857 for a perpetual international challenge competition. In 1987 the San Diego Yacht Club took control of the U.S. competition.

Since the 1920s the America’s Cup race has been between one defending vessel and one challenging vessel, both of which are determined in separate series of elimination trials. Each competing vessel must be designed, built, and, insofar as possible, outfitted solely in the country that it represents. Until 1995, the America’s Cup competition was a best four of seven races; from that year until 2007 it required five of nine races to win.

In 1983, after American yachts (sponsored by the New York Yacht Club) had successfully defended the cup 24 times without a loss since the first defense in 1870, the Australian yacht Australia II won the cup. In the next race, in 1987, the Americans (now from San Diego) regained the cup. The controversial race of 1988, between the winning American 60-foot (18-metre) catamaran and a New Zealander 132-foot (40-metre) monohull, had to be decided in the courts and provoked a redefinition of the rules governing future races.

1995 event was won by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, only the second victory by a non-American challenger in the history of the competition. The skipper of the New Zealand victory in 1995 was Russell Coutts, who also led New Zealand to a win in 2000; Coutts, skippering for a Swiss team, won a third consecutive victory in 2003. In 2007 the Swiss team, with Brad Butterworth as skipper, defended its title. An American team owned by businessman Larry Ellison, Oracle Team USA, recaptured the Cup in 2010. In 2013 the U.S. had one of the most-dramatic comebacks in sporting history: the American team was trailing New Zealand 8–1 in a best-of-17 series and then won the remaining eight races for the most-unexpected America’s Cup victory of all time. (Source Encyclopaedia Britannica)