On the 149 kilometre course from Alcamo to Agrigento, Ulissi made it a second Italian in a row to win a stage in this year's competition, following yesterday's opening stage win for compatriot Filippo Ganna in the time trial.

Sitting behind his teammate Valerio Conti, also of Italy, he played off the slipstream given to him to finish ahead of Giro debutant Peter Sagan of Slovakia and Mikkel Frølich Honoré of Denmark in a sprint.

On a relatively flat course, there were not enough climbs to displace Ganna from the top spot in the general classification.

The Italian keeps a 22-second lead over Portugal's João Almeida, while Britain's Geraint Thomas moved into third after finishing 11th on the second stage, 23 seconds behind overall.

Ulissi's victory was not straightforward having followed Conti with a kilometre to go who himself was chasing the breakaway move from Italian Luca Wackermann.

After Wackermann lost contact, Ulissi let Honoré hit the front before surging away from the Danish rider, Conti and Sagan who could not reply.

Ulissi's victory did see him claim the points jersey, while Ganna remains in the lead in the young riders classification.

A crash in the peloton with 20km to go threatened the chase the pack were giving to the breakaway group - which included Belgium's Thomas de Gendt - but with 11km until the finish line, the deficit was gone.

In that crash, French cyclist Nicolas Edet suffered the most - going down as the group began to pick up the pace, eventually finishing 7min 28sec off the front.

Dozens of riders were classified as just five seconds behind Ulissi on the stage, with Australia's Michael Matthews finishing fourth to be the next person over the line after the three main sprinters.

Wackermann and Almeida were next followed by Italian pair Gianluca Brambilla and Vincenzo Nibali.

The third stage of the 2020 Giro d'Italia is scheduled for tomorrow and will be the first mountain stage of the tour.

On the 150km route from Enna to Mount Etna, it will be the third of four stages in Sicily before heading to Italy's mainland.