In 1846 came the first serious attempt to establish a code. This was instigated at Cambridge University by H. de Winton and J. C. Thring who met representatives from the major public schools with a view to creating a standardized set of rules. They agreed on and drew up ten, known as the Cambridge Rules. These were and are of vital importance in the history of what was later to be named association football, and which Thring described as "The Simplest Game".

In 1855 Sheffield Football Club (FC), the world's oldest club, was founded, and in 1862 Notts County, the world's oldest league club, came into existence. In October 1863 the Football Association (FA) was founded at the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, London. The idea for the Football Association Challenge Cup (the FA Cup) came from the secretary of the FA, Charles Alcock, who proposed his plans at a meeting attended by 12 clubs in October 1871. Fifteen teams entered for the first competition in 1872 which was won by Wanderers against Royal Engineers. Until 1892 nearly all the finals were held at Kennington Oval, London, which is better known for cricket. Up to 1883 all the winners were amateur clubs. Wanderers won six times; old Etonians won twice and were six times runners-up. In 1872 also, there was the first official international match (between England and Scotland), and in 1878 the first match under floodlights was held. In the late 1870s there began a long and sometimes acrimonious dispute over the rights and wrongs of professionalism and whether or not players should be paid money over and above compensation for expenses and wages lost by taking part in a match. In 1885 professionalism was finally legalized, but the dispute was to drift on for years and affect other countries. Another major event was the foundation of the Football League in 1888; this was to become a model for all countries that subsequently adopted the game.This adoption took place rapidly in Europe and many other parts of the world in the closing years of the 19th century. British soldiers, sailors, colonial servants, business men, engineers, and teachers exported the game worldwide, as they did cricket and other games and sports. The pattern was the same. They would produce a ball and start a game and then encourage the locals to join in. In Vienna there was a large British colony who were responsible for creating the first Vienna football club and the Vienna Cricket and Football Club, from which FK Austria derived. The Austrian, Hugo Meisl, a member of Vienna Cricket Club and secretary of the Austrian FA (founded in 1904) was to have a very wide influence on the development of football in Europe and was the main force behind the Mitropa Cup (the prototype of modern European club events) and the Nations' Cup competitions. Denmark was another European country to take quickly to the game. There was an English Football Club in Copenhagen in 1879 and the Danish FA was founded in 1889. In Italy resident Englishmen founded the Genoa Football and Cricket Club, and Genoa (1892) is Italy's oldest league club; the Italian FA was created in 1898. The game started in Hungary in the 1890s (the FA was formed in 1901) and two Englishmen were in the first Hungarian team. In Germany and the Netherlands the game was well established by 1900 (when the German FA was founded). By 1908 there were 96 Dutch clubs. The Dutch FA was formed in 1889. Football was introduced to Russia in 1887 by two English mill owners, the Charnock brothers, near Moscow. By the late 1890s the Moscow League was in operation. In 1904, the world governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), was formed in Paris.

By early in the 20th century the game was in full swing in Europe and most countries had formed their football association: Belgium (1895), Czechoslovakia (1901), Finland (1907), Luxembourg (1908), Norway (1902), Portugal (1941), Romania (1908), Spain (1913), Sweden (1904), and Switzerland (1895). In South America British sailors had played football in Brazil in the 1870s, but the main moving spirit who established it was Charles Miller, the son of English immigrants. He encouraged British resident workers to form clubs (some already existed for cricket). The first mainly Brazilian club was the Associaciao Athletica Mackenzie College in São Paulo. In Argentina the game was introduced by British residents in Buenos Aires and the FA was founded in 1891. However, it caught on quite slowly and in the end it was Italian immigrants who made the game popular. Chile formed its FA in 1895, Uruguay in 1900, and Paraguay in 1906. British influence in South America is evident in the names of some club sides: Corinthians in Brazil, Everton and Rangers in Chile, Liverpool and Wanderers in Uruguay, River Plate and Newell's Old Boys in Argentina.The United States has not often been associated with soccer, but it was played there from an early stage. The Oneida Club of Boston was founded in 1862 and the national side reached the semi-finals of the 1930 World Cup. In Africa the British colonial movement played a large part in introducing association football but it developed more slowly on that continent, while in Canada and Australia it is only lately that it has become popular.