  The Higgs mechanism is one of the central pieces of the Standard Model of
electroweak interactions and thanks to it we can generate the masses of the
elementary particles. Its fundamental origin is nonetheless unknown.
Furthermore, in order to preserve renormalizability we have to break the gauge
symmetry spontaneously, what leads to a huge induced cosmological constant
incompatible with observations. It turns out that in the context of generalized
Brans-Dicke theories of gravity the Higgs potential structure can be motivated
from solutions of the field equations which carry harmless cosmological vacuum
energy. In addition, the late time cosmic evolution effectively appears like an
universe filled with mildly evolving dynamical dark energy mimicking
quintessence or phantom dark energy.
