diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 3e7d1f324..555bf3814 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@ IMPROVEMENTS:
    [GH-1567]
  * credential/aws-ec2: Added a new constraint, 'bound_account_id' to the role
    [GH-1523]
+ * physical/etcd: Support `ETCD_ADDR` env var for specifying addresses [GH-1576]
  * secret/aws: Listing of roles is supported now  [GH-1546]
  * secret/mssql,mysql,postgresql: Reading of connection settings is supported
    in all the sql backends [GH-1515]
diff --git a/physical/etcd.go b/physical/etcd.go
index 4bb368aac..4f88182d8 100644
--- a/physical/etcd.go
+++ b/physical/etcd.go
@@ -89,6 +89,10 @@ func newEtcdBackend(conf map[string]string, logger *log.Logger) (Backend, error)
 	if address, ok := conf["address"]; ok {
 		machines = address
 	}
+	machinesEnv := os.Getenv("ETCD_ADDR")
+	if machinesEnv != "" {
+		machines = machinesEnv
+	}
 	machinesParsed := strings.Split(machines, EtcdMachineDelimiter)
 
 	// Verify that the machines are valid URLs
diff --git a/physical/etcd_test.go b/physical/etcd_test.go
index f39312486..36ca26e8c 100644
--- a/physical/etcd_test.go
+++ b/physical/etcd_test.go
@@ -46,10 +46,11 @@ func TestEtcdBackend(t *testing.T) {
 		}
 	}()
 
+	// Generate new etcd backend. The etcd address is read from ETCD_ADDR. No
+	// need to provide it explicitly.
 	logger := log.New(os.Stderr, "", log.LstdFlags)
 	b, err := NewBackend("etcd", logger, map[string]string{
-		"address": addr,
-		"path":    randPath,
+		"path": randPath,
 	})
 	if err != nil {
 		t.Fatalf("err: %s", err)
diff --git a/website/source/docs/commands/environment.html.md b/website/source/docs/commands/environment.html.md
index 928d2d9ee..bbc9f48eb 100644
--- a/website/source/docs/commands/environment.html.md
+++ b/website/source/docs/commands/environment.html.md
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ description: |-
 # Environment variables
 
 The Vault CLI will read the following environment variables to set
-behavioral defaults.  These can be overridden in all cases using
+behavioral defaults. These can be overridden in all cases using
 command-line arguments; see the command-line help for details.
 
 The following table describes them:
diff --git a/website/source/docs/config/index.html.md b/website/source/docs/config/index.html.md
index ad43fc0f5..0e576675f 100644
--- a/website/source/docs/config/index.html.md
+++ b/website/source/docs/config/index.html.md
@@ -331,7 +331,8 @@ For etcd, the following options are supported:
 
   * `address` (optional) - The address(es) of the etcd instance(s) to talk to.
     Can be comma separated list (protocol://host:port) of many etcd instances.
-    Defaults to "http://localhost:2379" if not specified.
+    Defaults to "http://localhost:2379" if not specified. May also be specified
+    via the ETCD_ADDR environment variable.
 
   * `sync` (optional) - Should we synchronize the list of available etcd
     servers on startup?  This is a **string** value to allow for auto-sync to
@@ -473,7 +474,7 @@ profile enabled. Vault will handle renewing profile credentials as they rotate.
 
   * `max_parallel` (optional) - The maximum number of concurrent connections to Azure. Defaults to "128".
 
-The current implementation is limited to a maximum of 4 MBytes per blob/file. 
+The current implementation is limited to a maximum of 4 MBytes per blob/file.
 
 #### Backend Reference: Swift (Community-Supported)