Short answers, pulled from the story.
The oldest known version is usually considered to be the Greek story of Rhodopis, recorded by the geographer Strabo sometime between 7 BC and 23 AD in his Geographica. Rhodopis was a Greek courtesan living in the Egyptian colony of Naucratis whose sandal was snatched by an eagle and dropped into the lap of the king, who then searched for her and made her his wife.
Giambattista Basile wrote the first European prose version, titled La gatta Cenerentola, published posthumously in his collection Pentamerone in 1634. The story was set in the Kingdom of Naples and written in the Neapolitan dialect.
Charles Perrault introduced both the glass slipper and the fairy godmother in his 1697 French version, Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre. Most scholars believe the glass slipper was a deliberate piece of poetic invention rather than an inherited element of the tale.
The Brothers Grimm version, Aschenputtel, published in 1812 and revised in 1819, has no fairy godmother. Help comes instead from a hazel tree planted on the heroine's mother's grave. The 1819 edition adds that the stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to fit the golden slipper and are eventually blinded by magical doves at Aschenputtel's wedding.
In English-language folklore, Cinderella has become an archetypal name for someone whose qualities go unrecognized, or someone who achieves recognition after a period of obscurity and neglect. In sports, a Cinderella is an underrated team that defeats stronger, more favored competitors. The name itself derives from the Italian cenere, meaning ash or cinder.
Thousands of variants are told throughout the world. In 1893, Marian Roalfe Cox catalogued 345 variants in a single volume commissioned by the Folklore Society of Britain. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification system groups many of them under type 510A, called Persecuted Heroine.