The oldest traces of life on the soil of Jagodina date back to the Late Stone Age around 5500 BC. In the first century, a Roman settlement was created under "Đurđev brdo".
The medieval village of Jagodna was first mentioned on July 15 (July 28 according to the new calendar) in 1399 in a letter from Princess Milica and her sons Stefan and Vukan to the Dubrovnik municipality. This document is the first preserved written information that Jagodina existed in the 14th century, but that it was also a temporary ruling residence.
On July 8, 1411, Despot Stefan Lazarević held a Parliament in the then Jagodnja in the presence of priests and nobles, at which he passed a gold-printed charter (chrysostom) by which he granted new privileges and estates to the Hilandar monastery.
In the time of the Turks, a settlement was created on the territory of Jagodina, which the Turks called Jagodina palanka, hence the current name. In that period, the role of Jagodina was mainly traffic, as a station for accommodation.
With Kočina Krajina 1788-1791. years, the liberation wars of the Serbian people against the Turks begin. The two most important battles at the very beginning of the First Serbian Uprising took place in Jagodina. In the first battle, Karadjordj failed, while in the second he defeated the Turks and thus liberated Jagodina. After the Second Serbian Uprising, Jagodina stabilized economically and developed into a border town (until 1833) of the then Miloš's Serbia.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the city had about 200 shops and 330 craft shops. In the fifties of the 19th century, the first industrial facilities were opened, as well as schools, pharmacies, hospitals, as follows:
1846 - The first glass factory of Avram Petronijević, also the first industrial facility in Serbia
1850 - Workshop for the production of vessels
1851 - First reading room
1852 - The first pharmacy of Đorđe Krstić
1867 - The first hospital is established
1869 - Jagodina Realka was founded
1879 - Second glassmaker Nack Janković
1884 - Prva banka - Jagodinska štedionica
1884 - A railway is built and the first train passes through Jagodina
1898 - The Jagodina Men's Teachers' School was founded
At the beginning of the 20th century, Jagodina had a large number of industrial companies, as well as craft and trade shops, and in 1902, the slaughterhouse of Pietro Klefiš began operating.
Jagodina was liberated from the occupiers in the Second World War by units of the Red Army, on October 17, 1944. The city, then a municipality, was named Svetozarevo on September 22, 1946, after the socialist Svetozar Markovic, but in a referendum in 1992, the old name Jagodina was returned to it.