First, you write some songs and record them. From that, a metal stamper gets made, and it's from that stamper that your CDs are manufactured. You've now got a disc encoded with ones and zeroes, the bit information your CD player's laser reads. You couldn't play this disc, though. If you put that piece o' plastic into your disc player at this point, the laser would fire straight through the sucker.
Compact discs are silver for a reason.
That silver coating is there to reflect the laser so that the encoded info on the CD can be read by your machine. After the silver coating, another protective coating is put on. After that, artwork can be silk screened onto the disc itself. It's still not done, though. Again, you don't go to the store and buy plastic discs.