The current format was first used at 1998 World Cup in France, and it is fairly different from the one used at the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930. However, despite numerous changes to the composition and setup of the tournament, the competition has a storied and revered past, and previous victories do indeed 'count' and are a source of pride and footballing folklore to this day.

Let's take a look at the format first. France 98 was the first tournament with thirty two teams divided into eight groups of four, with the best two advancing to the knock out stage. Before that, twenty four teams would participate (1982-1994), and before that only sixteen teams took part in the World Cup. Furthermore, the very first tournament was contested by thirteen teams only, and the 1938 and 1950 editions – incidentally the last and first World Cups before and after the Second World War interrupted proceedings – suffered from teams withdrawing, although they were originally planned for sixteen teams.

Speaking of missing teams, several European countries also refused to take part in the very first tournament in Uruguay, mostly due to travelling difficulties. The World Cup in 1930 was also the only one to feature invited teams as opposed to there being a qualification process for the final competition.

In general, the tournaments share the basic concept of teams playing in groups of four (or three in the aforementioned special cases) with either the top two teams or just the winner advancing to the next round. There have been two exceptions to this: the 1934 and 1938 World Cups. Those did not feature a group stage, instead pitting teams against each other in a knock out format right from the start.

At all the other tournaments, teams would advance into the next round. Two formats have been used: ne is the all familiar knock out stage used to this day, but also in the post-war editions of the competition. The other was used at three World Cups starting with 1974, and featured a second group stage, whose winners would qualify for the final (1974 and 1978) or with the top two teams advancing to the semifinal in 1982. And strangely enough, there has been a World Cup without a final game. In 1950, the tournament was decided by the four group winners participating in a final group, with Uruguay emerging as the unlikely champions.

It was not just the competition format and number of participants that had undergone some change throughout the history of the World Cup. As recently as 1990, when the tournament was held in Italy, only two points were awarded for a victory. The three points for a win system was first used at the World Cup in USA in 1994, although it was adopted by several leagues – such as England or Sweden – many years before that.

But enough about the technical side of things. To appreciate the history of the biggest sports tournament in the world, I think it is important to note that right now in Brazil, only the twentieth World Cup is taking place. The fact that the competition has strictly kept to the four year schedule, only missing two editions due to war, ensured that it remains an incredibly prestigious event.

Furthermore, while the inner workings of particular World Cups have changed, the tournament remains the same entity. Ever since its inception in 1930, it has been the sole international competition organized by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, an international federation of the official bodies governing the sport in their own countries. Only the Olympics are an event of comparable magnitude and history, although they still pale in comparison to the prominence of football.

Speaking of the Olympics, after its foundation in 1904, FIFA in its early days cooperated closely with the Olympic committees in administrating the football portion of the Games. Seeing the success and popularity but at the same time realizing the limitations of the amateur nature of the Olympics, FIFA soon decided to host their own event, leading to the first World Cup in 1930.

Although professional athletes including footballers can now take part in the Olympics, the tournament in its current format only includes under-23 squads (augmented by three older players) and lacks the prestige of FIFA youth competitions such as the U-20 World Cup. Olympic football did have a sort of an impact on the World Cup, though, with Urugay being chosen as the hosts of the 1930 tournament in large part to their Olympic successes in 1924 and 1928.

Some more basic but useful reading can be found in the History section of the FIFA website. For a more in-depth look, The Ball is Round is a great (and big, around a thousand pages long!) book about the history of football by David Goldblatt. And if you are not just interested in the 'institutional' history but rather the changes in football as a sport with its mechanics, systems and tactics, Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid is a good read.

So there you have it. We have only had the current format for five editions now, but at the same time that is a quarter of all the tournaments ever hosted, and there has never been an international sports competition that could rival the World Cup.

The first official football World Cup was held in 1930. The host country was Uruguay, who also won vs Argentina in the final. Before that, there were a number of international tournaments. During the Summer Olympics in 1900 and 1904 the football tournaments was contested between clubs of amateurs representing their respective nations. In the 1908 Olympics for the first time national selections competed under the supervision of FIFA, but the restrictions to amateur players means these tournaments cannot be considered actual precursors of the World Cup.

However, the tournament at the 1920 Olympics can be defined as semi-professional (the English delegation was very vocal against the growing professionalism of football, which they saw as a pastime for gentlemen). Belgium won in a very controversial match against Czechoslovakia; the Czechs were disqualified after losing the game for a series of complaints that you can find here.

At the 1924 Olympics, it is reported that football had much following: the final match was witnessed by 41,000 spectators at the Stade Olympique (which now only has a capacity of 14,000 - at the time it was common practice to be standing during the game, or simply packed in the stands) in Colombes, near Paris. Uruguay, who were the first national team to put emphasis on fitness, cruised through the tournament, led by the shining talent of then-18 years old striker Pedro Petrone.

Uruguay won four years later, too, at the 1928 Summer Olympics; but FIFA felt that football needed to head towards true professionalism, so an independent competition was organized two years later in Uruguay (with the hosts winning, again).

Two factors, however, were missing for a World Cup to be global: a large selection of teams, and at the very least nationwide broadcasting of the matches.

The 1950 World Cup was very peculiar - for example, there was no official final, but a round robin tournament to declare the winner. The last match of the group also served, coincidentally, as a de facto final - the famous and fabled Maracanazo.

If we choose television broadcast and a modern format made of an initial group phase and then knockout matches with a final to declare the winner as necessary for a World Cup to be a "true" World Cup, then we should look no further than 1954. It was broadcast, albeit not in its entirety; and the format is indistinguishable from this year's Cup. It also appears to have been a very spectacular tournament, with the first example of a very early form of Total Football brought by the Aranycsapat, the Hungarian "Golden Team".

The edition that cemented this global status was, however, Mexico 1970 - not only for broadcasts, but also due to the perceived epicness and historical values of specific matches, such as the semi-final between Italy and West Germany.

EDIT: I forgot to answer the question about who competed in the first World Cup: Uruguay, Argentina, USA, Jugoslavia, Chile, Brazil, France, Romania, Paraguay, Peru, Belgium, Bolivia, Mexico - in the ranking order published by FIFA in 1986.

It's interesting that you mention whether old World Cup wins really count, as some sports have the problem where their very oldest versions were limited in competitors and played in a very amateur invitational sense, which is very different from their modern version. For example in the Davis Cup in tennis, Britain has the third highest total of wins with 9 but its last win came in 1936 and the majority came during an era but it was pretty much just Britain/USA/Australia as strong competitors. Does this de legitimise those wins? You can make a certain argument that it does, you wouldn't consider Britain a Davis Cup power in the modern day although it does still have the 3rd highest total of wins.

The World Cup was different in that it started relatively late compared to other footballing competitions (aside from the Euros), the Copa América pre-dates it by fourteen years, various national leagues by more. Thus there was an already established and widespread footballing culture across the world as seen by the varied nature of the nations that entered in 1930. The United States, Uruguay and Yugoslavia are about as varied from each other as possible compared to other events of the time such as the Davis Cup, Ryder Cup, Rugby test internationals, cricket test internationals etc which tended to be rather North America/British Commonwealth focused. Thus even as far back as 1930 the game was in a fairly mature state and the early World Cups featured a good representation of the world (although the developing world was missing). By around 1950 you could even argue that the relative quality of the World Cup for it's era was better than more recent tournaments. When Joao Havelange ousted Stanley Rous from FIFA and began expanding the number of teams involved (partly due to altruism and partly because he's the godfather of all FIFA corruption) it diluted the quality. When France '98 brought the total number of teams up to 32, you saw a number of first time qualifiers getting tanked, for example Japan, South Africa and Jamaica. It's only really now in 2014 where this expansion has been fully processed and there's no really awful teams in the World Cup any more, while the African teams have regressed from their exciting teams of the 90s/early 00s, they're still somewhat competent. Nations like Japan have developed massively from where they were walkovers in '98 to a technically adept strong side in the modern day capable of the 2nd round/QF. We're now at the stage where you don't expect thrashings in the group stages...unless you're Spain!

The only asterisk against the early World Cups is the absence of the Home Nations. Had the World Cup began 15-20 years earlier, England most definitely and perhaps even Scotland would have won more titles. Even in this period the world game was mature enough for the possibility of some kind of World Cup (the Olympics functioning as kind of stand in) unlike other sports which were more limited in their participation. As it was even in the 1930s despite the rise of quality South American teams such as Uruguay and the development of the Western Europeans, England still could have posed real problems. Italy won the 1934 World Cup but England beat them 3-2 five months later. Just after the next WC in 1938 they beat a Rest of Europe team 3-0 and drew 2-2 with Italy, just after Italy had won the cup again. It took until 1929 for England to lose a match against a non British side (4-3 against Spain in Madrid) and 1953 for a foreign team to beat them in England (6-3 against Hungary). Although it should also be remembered that they only played European teams in this era. England's absence is a mark against the early World Cups but it's not enough to claim they weren't important.

tl;dr: Football as a world sport matured much quicker than other team based sports and thus even as far back as 1930 the World Cup mattered, was representative of much of the world game (with only the Home Nations missing out of the footballing powers) and those titles should are still recognised today. Uruguay's titles of 1930 and 1950 are just as important and indicative of the world game at the time as Spain's in 2010.