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Campinas was founded in 1774 on the high plateau of Sao Paulo state where the climate suited coffee, and for much of the 19th century it was the wealthiest coffee-producing region on earth. The Mogiana and Paulista railways were built largely to move Campinas coffee to the port at Santos, and the train station that anchored the city's commercial life in the 1870s is now a cultural center. The wealth from coffee funded a city of theaters, civic institutions, and the abolitionist movement: Campinas abolished slavery within its borders before the national Lei Aurea of 1888, a distinction the city has not forgotten.

The composer Carlos Gomes was born in Campinas in 1836 and became Brazil's most famous 19th-century opera composer, celebrated in Milan and performing at La Scala before dying in Belem in 1896.

His birthplace is now a museum near the city center. But the modern identity of Campinas is built on UNICAMP, the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, founded in 1966 and now consistently ranked as one of Brazil's two or three best research universities. The technology industry that grew around UNICAMP and the adjacent Campinas technology park from the 1980s onward is why Campinas is called Brazil's Silicon Valley, with companies including CPqD, Motorola, Samsung, and dozens of semiconductor and software firms operating from its districts.