He was born in Italy in 1856, the son of Giovanni Luigi Bugatti (a renowned Italian sculptor and architect). He began his artistic career in Milan around 1880, after attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera in 1875, and then the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. 

In 1880, he began a career as a cabinetmaker and designer of fine furniture in Milan and achieved his first success in France in 1888, then gained artistic fame with a silver medal at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris, as well as a grand prize from the jury for his game and conversation room at the first international exhibition of modern decorative art in 1902. 

He moved to Paris in 1904, then retired to Pierrefonds (Oise) in 1910, where he became mayor during the First World War. In 1935, at the age of 79, he retired with his wife Teresa to Alsace, and moved into an apartment in the northern shed of his son Ettore Bugatti's industrial site in Molsheim. He spent his last months living in his apartment, at the Bugatti factory in Molsheim, where he frequented the workers, and at the "Hardtmühle" villa where Ettore and his family lived. He died in April 1940 in the hospital in Molsheim, and was laid to rest in the Bugatti family vault in the Dorlisheim cemetery.