The Strapi project is an open-source, API-driven headless CMS that utilizes the Koa.js framework to handle HTTP requests and responses. It provides a robust and well-structured framework for creating routes and controllers, with a focus on simplicity, flexibility, and modularity. The framework allows developers to create custom middleware functions that can be used to preprocess every API request, providing full access to the request data, ctx.request, and allowing for tasks such as logging, parsing request data, or conducting authentication checks. Strapi's methodology aligns well with other contemporary frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, and Laravel, making it a viable option for Node.js backend development.