Production notes

Because of the success of Edwards' previous films Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Pink Panther, and A Shot in the Dark, the film's budget started at $6 million. Mirisch Productions initially financed the film for United Artists. The film's escalating costs led UA to drop the film, but the project was picked up by Warner Bros. Pictures. Edwards wanted Robert Wagner to play the leading man, but studio executive Jack L. Warner insisted on Curtis, possibly because of Natalie Wood's recent divorce from Wagner. (Burt Lancaster was announced at one stage.) Working with Warner, Curtis's new agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar negotiated US$125,000 for Curtis—more than Edwards and Lemmon, who were to receive US$100,000 each. After Warner signed the Curtis contract, Lazar reasoned that Edwards and Lemmon should make US$125,000 and Warner upped its compensation to match Curtis. Julie Andrews was first approached for the role of Maggie DuBois. Andrews, having admired the work of Edwards, wanted to work on the film, but was forced to bow out due to delays on The Sound of Music. Andrews eventually married Edwards and acted in several of his films afterward. Natalie Wood did not want to make The Great Race, but Warner talked her into it. Wood was unhappy with her career and her personal life, having been divorced from Robert Wagner in April 1962. Warner asked Curtis if he would give a percentage of his film royalties to Wood as an enticement, but Curtis refused. He said, "I couldn't give her anything to make her want to do the movie." Instead of more money, Warner promised Wood that if she completed The Great Race, she could star in Gavin Lambert's drama Inside Daisy Clover, a role she greatly wished to have. Wood agreed, thinking that filming would be brief on Edwards' movie. Shooting began on June 15, 1964. Many of the sight gags for The Great Race were expensive to create and the costs ballooned to US$12 million by the time the film was finished. Edwards, sometimes with Wood in tow, repeatedly visited Warner in his office to ask for more money. Warner approved nearly all of the requests. When it was released, it was the most expensive comedy ever filmed. Shooting ended in November 1964. During the five months of filming, Wood's unhappiness was not visible to the cast and crew and her characterization of Maggie DuBois was playful. Her sister Lana Wood thought that Wood looked the prettiest she ever had, but sensed that the film "was physically taxing" for Wood. On Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving, Wood wrapped the last bit of dialog work, then went home and swallowed a bottle of prescription pills. Groggy from the drugs, she called her friend Mart Crowley, who took her to the hospital for emergency treatment. Music for the film was by Henry Mancini and the costumes were designed by Edith Head. Production design, setting the period and augmenting the visual humor, was by Fernando Carrere, who had designed The Great Escape and The Pink Panther for Blake Edwards. The unique slideshow-style title design was by Ken Mundie.

The hero's white car, the Leslie Special, was built by Warner Bros. to resemble a Thomas Flyer, the car that won the 1908 New York to Paris Race. According to the Petersen Automotive Museum, four Leslie Specials were built. One of the four is at the Tupelo Automobile Museum in Tupelo, Mississippi, listed as a 1963 Leslie Special Convertible. Another of the four appears painted dark green in the 1970 Warner Bros. film The Ballad of Cable Hogue—the grille can be seen bearing the words Leslie Special, with the wheels and tires remaining their original white color. This vehicle shows up during the last 30 minutes of the movie carrying a lead character and has a pivotal role at the end of the movie. The villain's black car was named the Hannibal Twin-8; five were constructed. One is on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum, powered by a Volkswagen industrial engine. Another is at the Volo Auto Museum in Volo, Illinois. This model includes a prop "cannon" and a working smoke generator. The Volo museum describes the Hannibal Twin-8 as built by Warner Bros. at a cost of US$150,000 ($1.2 million in 2024 dollars ), powered by a Corvair six-cylinder engine with three-speed manual transmission and six wheels. All four rear wheels are powered by a chain drive. Both vehicles were first on display at Movie World's Cars of the Stars Motor Museum in Buena Park, California, until the museum closed in the late 1970s. It was located adjacent to the Planes of Fame Museum. Also, a die cast toy car of the Leslie Special was issued as part of the best-selling TV and movie tie-in series produced by Corgi Toys in the mid-1960s.

The Technicolor scene for the pie fight in the royal bakery was filmed over five days. The first pastry thrown was part of a large cake decorated for King Friedrich Hapnick (Lemmon)'s coronation. Following this was the throwing of 4,000 pies, the most pies ever filmed in a pie fight. The scene lasts four minutes and 20 seconds and cost US$200,000 ($1.5 million in 2024 dollars ) to shoot; US$18,000 ($140,000 in 2024 dollars ) just for the pastry. Colorful cream pies with fillings such as raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, and lemon were used. For continuity between days of shooting, the actors were photographed at the end of each day and then made up the following morning to have the same colorful appearance and the same smears of pie crust and filling. Edwards told the cast that a pie fight by itself is not funny, so to make it funny, they would build tension by having the hero, dressed all in white, fail to get hit with any pies. He said, "The audience will start yearning for him to get it". Finally, the hero was to take a (white) pie in the face at "just the right moment". Shooting was halted while the actors took the weekend off. Over the weekend, the pie residue spoiled all over the scenery. When the actors returned Monday morning, the set stank so badly that the building required a thorough cleaning and large fans to blow out the sour air. The missing pie residue was recreated carefully with more pies and shooting resumed. At first, the actors had fun with the pie fight assignment, but eventually the process grew wearisome and dangerous. Wood choked briefly on pie filling, which hit her open mouth. Lemmon exaggerated that he got knocked out a few times; he said "a pie hitting you in the face feels like a ton of cement". At the end of shooting, when Edwards called "cut!", he was barraged with several hundred pies that members of the cast had hidden, waiting for the moment. The pie fight scene paid homage to the early Mack Sennett practice of using a single thrown pie as comedic punctuation, but to a greater degree, it was a celebration of movie pie fights such as Behind the Screen (1916) with Charlie Chaplin; The Battle of the Century (1927) starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy; and In the Sweet Pie and Pie (1941) with the Three Stooges. In his script for The Great Race, Edwards called for a "Battle of the Century–style pie fight". Although Edwards used 4,000 pies over five days, many of these were used as set dressing for continuity. Laurel and Hardy used 3,000 pies in only one day of shooting, so more are seen flying through the air. Leonard Maltin compared The Great Race pie fight to The Battle of the Century and determined that Laurel and Hardy's pacing was far superior, that the more modern film suffered from an "incomplete understanding of slapstick", while the 1927 pie fight remains "one of the great scenes in all of screen comedy."

The Great Race was generally not well-received upon release, and critical assessment was mostly negative, making it the first notable failure for director Edwards. Most critics attacked its blatant and overdone slapstick humor and its lack of substance. It also suffered from comparisons with another race-themed "epic comedy" of 1965, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Film critic Richard Schickel wrote that although the film "bumps along very pleasantly for the most part", Edwards failed at his attempt to recreate the slapstick atmosphere of a Laurel and Hardy comedy. Schickel felt that Wood was "hopelessly miscast" and that the energies of Lemmon and Curtis did not quite make the slapstick work. Maltin wrote that Wood "never looked better" and that the film's comedy sometimes worked but was otherwise forced: "a mixed bag". On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 72% based on 25 reviews, with an average score of 6.00/10. Despite earning theatrical rentals of over $11.4 million in the United States and Canada, due to its high cost, it caused a loss to the studio.

The film was a major influence on Wacky Races, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. The film's characterizations were rather cartoonish. Furthermore, film editor and sound-effects man Treg Brown, who worked on many classic Warner Bros. cartoons, worked on this film. Brown's sound design won the film an Academy Award for Best Sound Effects.