Usually, excessive piston to cylinder clearance.
Imagine the piston sliding up and down in the cylinder as fast as it does. As the crankshaft moves through its motion the piston is "pushed" front and back as well. The piston skirts are designed with strong parts inside of them as "thrust surfaces" to keep this forward to backward movement or rocking motion under control so that the piston can move up and down without slamming forward and backward too hard. As the piston to cylinder clearance gets out of spec, however, the piston is allowed more and more room to "rock" slamming the thrust surface of the piston skirt against the cylinder harder and harded with each stroke. Finally, when the piston to cylinder clearance is too great, the piston slams up against the cylinder and creates a crack.
From then it's simply physics as to when and where the piece lets loose and how much damage it does on it's way out.
Obviously other things can create a broken piston skirt; IFO, damage while it was being assembled, or just a manufacturing defect. But normally cylinder to piston clearance problems.