In this talk, we will introduce our recent results on the relationship between Finsler metrics and the degree of symmetry of closed manifolds. We first show that the degree of symmetry of a closed manifold $M$ is equal to the maximum of the dimensions of the groups of isometries of all possible Finsler metrics on $M$. Moreover, let $M$ be a connected compact manifold and $N(M)$ be the degree of symmetry. If $M$ is not diffeomorphic to a compact rank one Riemannian symmetric space, then there exists a non-Riemannian Finsler metric on $M$ such that the group of the isometries of $F$, $I(M, F)$, has dimension $N(M)$.