Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
No formula, no, but there are good world building techniques and there are bad worldbuilding techniques. Even more important, there are Better worldbuilding techniques and worse ones. Whilst I also havent seen any codified guide to this, I think its not impossible that one exists or could exists.
There are ways to create a world that lead to consistently more interesting ways to interact for the players and their characters. This of course may not be your goal as a DM. Perhaps you have a strictly narrative experience you want to provide where you are the storyteller and the players simply play the role you set out for them to. This is fine, those games are super fun for certain types. However, for those looking for a more sandbox style game or who want to let the players create the story? There are techniques out there that help build a world that encourages and supports that in a better way than other techniques.
I guess I said all that to say this: Building a world specifically for the players characters leads to worlds that seem...off. That are less interesting to interact with. It creates a dissonance and disruptive feel where the players suddenly begin to stop thinking they exist in a real place, but more some odd illusion/matrix thing. It just severely lowers believability, and I'd argue that if you want to have a believable world, it CANNOT be built for the specific PCs.
I disagree. Or, from a non-D&D game standpoint, at least. D&D has no mechanics for challenging the kind of building that focuses entirely on the PC. It is a system that requires some form of external to PC design, and so it fights against any real attempt to build a world around the PCs. This is where your point of feeling 'off' comes from -- the system itself fights against this. There are, however, a number of systems that do build around PC very well, and this is because each of them has a system that challenges these build points as part of play and, while still focusing on the PC, allows such things to become positive or negative according to how those challenges go for the PCs. This can, if employed properly (which isn't super easy, probably why most of these games are a bit niche), create a rich and detailed tapestry of a world, based entirely on the PCs, without feeling hollow, thin, or off. These systems work to reinforce this in ways D&D cannot.
That's not a knock on D&D, by the way. Game systems cannot do everything -- they're built to do the thing they do. It's why you can't play chess with the rules for Texas hold-em.