The C Major Mass was completed in March 1779 in Salzburg, Mozart having returned to the city after 18 months of fruitless job-hunting in Paris and Mannheim. His father Leopold had helped him to find a job as court organist and composer at Salzburg Cathedral.

The work, first performed at Easter that year, seems to have acquired the "Coronation" soubriquet at the Imperial Court in Vienna in the early 19th Century, after becoming a regular for coronations and other services there.

Mozart re-used some aspects of the Mass in later works. The soprano solo in the Agnus Dei reappeared as the aria Dove sono in The Marriage of Figaro.