It was first built by two enthusiast Devs as a joke, almost similar to the blockchain of bitcoin with few differences. Then after a short time they left it and stop the development since then. The project was maintained only by a large community who like the concept knowing that a coin with an inflationary supply wouldn't succeed for long run, and this is true, but Doge kept raising more trust from community of newbies and enthusiast ignorant investors who didn't notice that its price was getting higher only because they keep buying it.

Elon Musk manipulated the Doge coin by Hype just to make an extra profit. Note that he announced to accept Doge as a payment method for his electric cars but he didn't do so, as he said the same about bitcoin.