Brevard County is located in east central Florida along the Atlantic Ocean. This is the Space Coast, site of the John F. Kennedy Space Center. The official county seat is in Titusville but many county services are run out of Viera. Because of the length of the county, Brevard County has more than one county sheriff's office and more than one county courthouse. Brevard County contains 1,018 square miles of land and 539 square miles of water surface. Brevard County was named for Theodore Washington Brevard, the Florida State Comptroller from 1854 to 1860.

The Brevard Justice Center is named for Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore, Civil Rights activists and founders of the local NAACP, who were killed by a bomb on Christmas Day in 1951, long before the main "Civil Rights Era" activities took place in the South.

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and St. Johns National Wildlife Refuge are wholly within Brevard County while the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge overlaps the southern boundary of the county.