The first gold coin produced by the Persian Empire was the Type 2 Gold Daric. Stuck under Darius “the great” to his son Xerxes I (featured in the movie 300) 505-480bc. The coin features a kneeling Hero-King drawing his bow into action. A very rare coin type with the market flooded with the Type 3 version. 
The daric’s origins can be traced to the Persian conquest of the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor by Cyrus the Great in around 546BC. Lydia had been the first ancient Kingdom under Croesus to introduce the practice of minting gold and silver coinage. Soon, under Darius, the Persians themselves began this practice, and Darius established the leading mint in Asia Minor at the previous Lydian capital, Sardis. During the next two centuries, the gold daric and the silver siglos set the standards for coinage in terms of weight and value. After the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great in 330, production of the daric quickly declined. Alexander and his immediate successors had many of the existing darics melted down and recast as coins bearing the image of his united empire.