HTML was developed in the 1980s and 1990s to standardize the coding languages used to design web pages. It originated from General Markup Language (GML) and Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) as a simpler language for displaying hypertext documents. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee designed HTML at CERN, establishing its core elements of text formatting and hyperlinks to connect web pages. HTML allows easy creation and modification of web pages through a standardized code that can display content across different platforms on the Internet.