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C++ was designed by Bjarne Stroustrup while he was working for AT&T Bell Labs, which eventually packaged and marketed it. Initial versions of the language were made available internally at AT&T beginning in 1981. C++ evolved steadily in response to user feedback.

The first edition of Stroustrup's book, The C++ Programming Language, was published in early 1986. After the release of Version 2.0 in 1989, C++ was rapidly acknowledged as a serious, useful language. Work began that year to establish an internationally recognized language standard for it. In 1997, a committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) completed and published internally the Draft Standard - The C++ Language, X3J16/97-14882, Information Technology Council (NSITC), Washington, DC.

In June, 1998, the draft standard was unanimously accepted by the representatives of the 20 principal nations that participated in the nine-year ANSI/ISO (International Standards Organization) effort. The third edition of Stroustrup's book, [Stroustrup97], was published in 1997. It is widely regarded as the definitive C++ reference.

Ongoing work to refine the standard is being done by the ISO with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), an international standards and conformity assessment body for all fields of electrotechnology. In 2005, a Technical Report 1, also known as "tr1" was published, containing many extensions to the C++ language and standard library. In 2010, the international standardization working group on C++ was named ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG21. A 2010 version of the C++ Draft Standard is freely available online. C++0x is the unofficial name of the "next version of C++", due to be finalized sometime in 2011.