The Glisenti Model 1910 used a bottlenecked 7.65 mm round which was similar to the 7.65×21mm Parabellum. Later, having the Italian Army judged the 7.65 round to be too light for military use, and having launched a competition for 9mm handguns instead, the Metallurgica Bresciana Tampini, owner of the design, adapted the Glisenti pistol to fire a 9mm round, obtained enlarging the original one (eliminating the bottleneck) without changing the load. Therefore, although being the cartridge dimensionally identical to the 9mm Luger (that was obtained in the same way from the 7.65×21mm Parabellum, but increasing the load) the 9mm Glisenti cartridge has a load that is about 1/4 lighter than the original military load of the 9mm Luger.Peterson, Phillip Standard Catalog of Military Firearms (5th Edition), p.230. Krause Publications, 2009 When Italy entered World War I, the need for more military pistols increased dramatically. The chief designer Tullio Marengoni completed his design of a simple blowback action pistol that could fire the same 9mm Glisenti cartridge, was patented by the Pietro Beretta Arms Factory on June 29, 1915, and was immediately adopted by the Royal Army, just over a month involved in the Great War. It replaced the previous ordnances, the revolvers Chamelot Delvigne 1874 and Bodeo Model 1889 and above all the automatic Glisenti Model 1910 and Brixia Mod. 1913, not fully satisfactory. A .32 ACP version, the Beretta M1917, was also produced and was adopted by the Italian Royal Navy. Finally, it was replaced as an ordnance by the Beretta M1934.
