Found the following description of why Ferrari's symbol is the prancing horse on one of my Alfa digests (Ferrari got his start at Alfa). Click below if you want to learn the real reason the horse prances:

Yes, Scuderia means horse stable. The Francesco Barraca connection is all bulloxed up with mythology, unfortunately:

The story is that Enzo Ferrari won a minor race called the Circuito del Savio at Ravenna on the Adriatic coast in 1923. WWI Italian flying ace, Franceso Barraca's parents the Conte and Contessa Barraca stopped to talk to the tenacious Ferrari afterwards, recognizing in him many qualities shared with their late son who was killed in battle. So overcome with emotion were they, that they gave Enzo Ferrari the painted shield of a prancing horse that was emblazoned on the side of their hero-son's downed plane and told him to use it as his symbol.

The truth is a little different. During the conversation it was revealed that Ferrari's late brother Alfredino had been a mechanic with the same squadron with which Barraca flew, and more to the point, Alfredino (who had died in 1918 of influenza) had been on Barraca's ground support team, and he and the ace were friends. In recognition of the dual loss of Barraca to his parents and Alfredino to Enzo, The Contessa later sent Ferrari a framed photograph of Major Francesco Barraca standing beside his 91st Squadriglia SPAD XIII aircraft, upon which was painted the emblem of a prancing horse on a white background and was signed "To Enzo Ferrari from Contessa Paolina Barraca."

It has been suggested that the Contessa gave Ferrari the right to use the emblem of the rearing horse, but this is probably not true for several reasons. First of all, the horse was not Major Barraca's personal coat-of-arms as has been suggested by the myth, but was, instead, the insignia of the 91st Italian Squadriglia, which, indeed, it still is, as the 91st still exists. Secondly, and more importantly, that permission was not the Contessa's to give.

OTOH, we can be almost 100% sure that Ferrari "appropriated" the emblem as his personal company logo. But Ferrari was neither stupid nor naive, While the 91st squadron's insignia has the horse facing right, Ferrari's horse faces left. Also, while the Squadriglia's horse is rearing, with both rear feet planted firmly on the ground, Ferrari's horse is prancing on one hoof like a Lipizzaner performing stallion. These differences make the Ferrari use of the motif different enough from the Squadriglia's to make any allegations of plagiarism moot.

Mythology is a powerful thing and while he was alive, the Old Man never corrected the story which has grown up around the incident. As the reporter says to the Jimmy Stewart character in John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence": "When the legend is more persuasive than the truth, print the legend." I guess the heroic picture of a weeping mother handing a panel cut from the charred fuselage of her dead hero-son's airplane to an oil-covered young race driver named Enzo Ferrari as a reward for his race win will live on forever - and that's OK.