Coronet Camera was founded in 1926 in Birmingham, UK by Frederik John Pettifer. In 1932, he moved the company to 308-310 Summer Lane in the Aston district. In 1933, the company was renamed Coronet Limited. The production was significant, with 300,000 simple lenses being ordered from Taylor Taylor & Hobson in 1935!
Alongside the production of low-end cameras, such as box and folding cameras, F.J. Pettifer also manufactured cameras using colored Bakelite, with the help of neighboring company Edwin Elliott, which molded cameras and lenses for Coronet. Many of the cameras produced were "gift objects" or sold by mail-order companies.

During World War II, Coronet's workshops were destroyed by German bombings. Coronet was acquired in 1946 by Dufay-Chromax Limited and stopped all production around 1967.