Global superiority refers to the phenomenon that stimuli can be discriminated, classified, and matched faster using a global feature than a local feature. Global superiority has been shown by several authors with forms (global feature) composed of smaller forms (local features) as stimuli. In contrast, the local features used in the present study had about the same spatial extent as the global feature and each local feature was structurally relevant to the global feature. Nevertheless, global superiority was consistently observed in several classification and matching tasks. This result, together with the results of other researchers using different stimulus materials shows that global superiority is a pervasive phenomenon. Under brief exposure durations within the threshold range, local features could, however, be better discriminated than global features. This finding invalidates the perceptual explanation of global superiority that global features are faster extracted and, in this way, become available earlier than local features. Considering the magnitude of the observed differences between classification times and threshold durations of global and local features, it is argued that under normal viewing conditions global features can be better selected and utilized for the given task than local features, and that this advantage by far outweighs the faster feature extraction of local features.