Original members Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael, Mickey Madden and Drummer Ryan Dusick first came together as Kara's Flowers in 1994, while they were still in high school. The band self-released an album called We Like Digging?, then signed to Reprise Records and released the album The Fourth World in 1997. After the album garnered a tepid response, the band parted ways with the record label and the members attended college.

James Valentine attended Berklee College of Music with John Mayer in 1996, where they developed a rapport. In 2002, the two reconnected at a Mayer radio broadcast. After Mayer heard their album, he was so impressed (particularly by "This Love", which became the most successful release off the album and propelled the band to superstardom) that he invited them to open for him during his early 2003 tour. The first single, "Harder to Breathe", slowly started to pick up airplay which helped spur sales of the album. By March 2004, Songs About Jane had reached the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 and "Harder to Breathe" had made the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts. The album peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 in September 2004, 26 months after its release; this was the longest period between an album's release and its initial Top 10 appearance since SoundScan results were included in the Billboard 200 in 1991. The album went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. This had all happened after the band "abandoned its post-grunge roots for a radio-friendly pop-soul sound, even while dabbling in hard rock." Mayer invited the band to open for him again in 2004. Over the next three years, the band toured virtually non-stop, including visits to seventeen countries. During this time, the band toured with Michelle Branch, Graham Colton, and the Rolling Stones. Other acts the band toured alongside with included Gavin DeGraw, Matchbox Twenty, Sugar Ray, Counting Crows, Phantom Planet, the Hives, Dashboard Confessional, Simon Dawes, the Thrills, Thirsty Merc, Marc Broussard, the Donnas, the Red West, Michael Tolcher, and Guster.

Adam Levine was introduced to Ryan Dusick by a mutual friend and Guitarist, Adam Salzman. Levine was 15 years old and Dusick was 16. Three of the five members of the band started playing together at age 12. The four original members of the band met while attending Brentwood EMH School in Los Angeles. While attending Brentwood EMH School, Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael joined up with Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick to form Kara's Flowers, a rock band. The name was taken from a girl that went to their high school that the band had a "collective crush" on. In 1997, when the band was playing at a beach party in Malibu, independent Producer Tommy Allen heard them play and offered to manage them and record a complete record with his partner, Songwriter John DeNicola, who is known for his work on Dirty Dancing – including "(I've Had) The Time of My Life". Producer Rob Cavallo's management team heard the record Allen and DeNicola produced, which eventually led Cavallo to offer them a deal with Reprise Records, re-recording the album. However, after the release of The Fourth World, during Levine and Madden's senior year of high school in 1997, it had morphed into a band with a style reminiscent of 1960s Britpop. Despite high expectations from the band and record company, the album failed to catch on and their lead single, "Soap Disco", was a failure. According to Levine, the failure of the album was "a huge disappointment" that nearly led them to break up. The album sold around 5,000 copies and the band was dropped after six months in early 1998.

The band returned to the music industry again in 2001. Producer Tim Sommer signed them to a demo deal with MCA Records and produced three tracks with them in Los Angeles in the middle of 2001 with Mark Dearnley engineering. Against Sommer's advice, MCA declined to pick up the band, and these tracks were never released. The band put together a demo that was rejected by several labels, before falling into the hands of Octone Records executives James Diener, Ben Berkman and David Boxenbaum. While looking for talent for the Octone label, Berkman was given a bunch of demos by the brother of a former colleague at Columbia Records and the song that caught his attention was "'Sunday Morning'" which he referred it as a "genius song". Berkman was surprised the song was credited to Kara's Flowers, because the band sounded completely different from the one he had heard while at Warner Bros. Records.

Maroon 5 have been the recipients of three Grammy Awards, three American Music Awards, four Billboard Music Awards, and five Teen Choice Awards. In 2004 World Music Awards, it won the award for "World's Best New Group". In 2012, Maroon 5 won the People's Choice award for Favorite Band.

Songs About Jane eventually reached No. 1 on the Australian albums (ARIA), while "Harder to Breathe" made the Top 20 singles charts in the US and UK, and Top 40 in Australia and New Zealand. The album also eventually climbed to No. 1 in the UK. The second single, "This Love", reached No. 5 in the US, No. 3 in the UK, and No. 8 in Australia. The third single, "She Will Be Loved," reached the Top 5 in both the US and the UK, and went to No. 1 in Australia. The fourth single, "Sunday Morning," reached the Top 40 in the US, UK, and Australia. Maroon 5 also played Live 8, in Philadelphia in 2005. Their set included a cover of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" and frontman Levine performed with one of his heroes, and the closing act, Stevie Wonder. On May 13, 2005, in Santa Barbara, California, the band wrapped up the Honda Civic Tour, which it headlined. On June 9, 2005, the band performed at the American Film Institute's tribute to filmmaker George Lucas. Lucas himself had selected Maroon 5 for the event, as it was his children's favorite band at the time. Over the years of touring with the band their Drummer, percussionist and backing vocalist Ryan Dusick had been suffering from the touring life. The strains of non-stop touring aggravated an old Sports injury. After several absences from the tour with Ryland Steen and Josh Day taking his place, Dusick officially left Maroon 5 in September 2006. Matt Flynn, the former Drummer of Gavin DeGraw and the B-52's, joined the band as Dusick's replacement.

After recording for two years in 2005, Maroon 5's second album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, was released worldwide in May 2007 by A&M Octone Records. According to Levine, the follow-up to Songs About Jane is "sexier and stronger", gaining inspiration from iconic 80s artists such as Prince, Shabba Ranks, Michael Jackson and Talking Heads. Ann Powers writing for Los Angeles Times said It Won't Be Soon Before Long is "An icy-hot blend of electro-funk and blue-eyed soul that works its cruel streak with the confidence of Daniel Craig's James Bond". Before its release, "Makes Me Wonder" was the No. 1 selling single and video on iTunes. It was also the No. 1 selling album, with more than 50,000 digital pre-sales. After its release, the album broke iTunes sales records its week of release, selling over 101,000 albums. The first single, "Makes Me Wonder," was released to radio March 27, 2007. The song debuted at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100, the lowest debuting single of the group's five chart entries. In the first week of May, the single skyrocketed from a lowly position of No. 64 to No. 1, the biggest jump in Billboard history at the time. "Makes Me Wonder" has also achieved No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs, Pop 100, and Hot Dance Club Play charts.

To support the album, the band performed on a "six-date club tour" in which it visited small venues in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami and New York City in early June 2007. The band followed with a concert that streamed live via MSN Music in mid-June. On July 10, it opened for The Police in Miami, and followed with an acoustic performance at the Miami club, Studio A, the next day. Their It Won't Be Soon Before Long Tour took place in 2007, where the band toured 28 cities in North America. The tour began September 29 in Detroit touring in 28 cities in North America and concluded November 10 in Las Vegas. the Hives, as the tour's special guest, performed on all of the dates while Sara Bareilles, Kevin Michael and Phantom Planet each performed in a portion of the tour. It toured with Dashboard Confessional in their world tour and on March 28, 2008, it began touring with OneRepublic, Brandi Carlile and Ry Cuming. The band has also performed "Makes Me Wonder" on season 6 and "If I Never See Your Face Again" on season 7 of American Idol. The re-release of the album featured a new duet version of "If I Never See Your Face Again" with Rihanna; the new version of the song also appeared on the re-release of Rihanna's album Good Girl Gone Bad. The band also released as the fifth single "Goodnight Goodnight", which appeared in The CW Fall 2008 advertisement.

Hands All Over, the band's third studio album, which was released in September 2010, peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. In 2011, the album was re-released and supported by the single "Moves like Jagger", a song featuring American singer Christina Aguilera. The song became the band's second single to reach number one on the Hot 100 chart; it has sold over 14.4 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles worldwide. The band released their fourth studio album, Overexposed, in June 2012. The album peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. The first two singles from the album "Payphone" and "One More Night", were both international hits and peaked at two and one on the Hot 100 chart respectively. "One More Night", managed to beat Psy's "Gangnam Style" by reaching number one on Billboard Hot 100 and stayed tied with Carly Rae Jepsen's hit single "Call Me Maybe" for most weeks at #1 in 2012.

The band's style changes from album to album. Songs About Jane consists of songs about Levine's ex-girlfriend Jane Herman. On It Won't Be Soon Before Long, however, the songs are less personal and are more electric with more use of synthesizers, creating a retro feel. Hands All Over continues the band's lost love theme, along with songs about infatuation and was re-released in 2011, with the hit single "Moves like Jagger", an electropop song which represents a drastic change in the band's sound, with more of a dance feel to it. "It was one of those songs that was definitely a risk," Levine said. "It's a bold statement. We've never really released a song like that. But it's exciting to do something different, do something new. I'm just glad that everyone likes it." James Valentine called Overexposed "our most 'pop' record ever and we weren’t shy about really going for it." They also have experimented with new wave and disco sounds on several albums.

On November 27, 2012, the band released "Daylight", the third single from the album. To promote the song, the band launched a video project called "The Daylight Project". The project encouraged fans to film their own segments for inclusion in the official music video for "Daylight", that would be directed by Jonas Åkerlund. "Daylight" was performed for the first time as a single on November 8, 2012, during an episode of the American version of The Voice and the official video was released on December 10, 2012. A little over 4 months later in the first week of April 2013, "Daylight" reached No. 1 on the Mainstream top 40, setting a record for the most No. 1's held by a group in over 20 years.

In 2013, Maroon 5 ranked as the 94th best Artist of all time based on Top 100 Artists of All Time at Billboard Hot 100 55th Anniversary.

Maroon 5 ranked 15 on Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) "Top Artists – Digital Singles" list, with certified sales of 15 million in the United States. In 2013, Maroon 5 became the third most-played Artist on Top 40 Mainstream radio, based on Clear Channel owned Mediabase, becoming one of the most successful acts of Interscope Records. On September 10, 2014, their fifth studio album, V, debuted at top of the weekly Billboard 200 chart with 164,000 copies sold within the first week.

In November 2015, the band was ranked 44th on Billboard Hot 100 57th Anniversary Greatest of All Time—Hot 100.

The lead single, "What Lovers Do", featuring American R&B singer SZA, was released on August 30, 2017. On October 4, 2017, the album, titled Red Pill Blues, became available as a pre-order on iTunes on October 6 and was released on November 3, 2017.

"Wait" was released as the second single from the album on January 16, 2018.

Adam Levine has stated: "[E]verything that's written and performed and put together pretty much comes from us. I just think people would be surprised to know that we’re a self-contained unit. We’re a band that does their own thing. There’s no puppet master." However, in an article about the Songwriter and Producer Benny Blanco, it is revealed that at least some of the band's songs, such as "Moves like Jagger," are the product of efforts by, or collaborations with, professional songwriters and producers. In the same article, Levine says, "It's almost as if [Benny Blanco] has the Midas touch in putting the right people together at the right time to create a musical moment. He's about the collaboration. And he's so good at nailing down who does everything best."