At any one time, a buyer's cart can have at most one discount applied to each of the following, in any combination:
- The cart's Item Total (All Cart Items);
- The cart's Shipping amount (All Cart Items);
- The price of each item in their cart (product-specific).
A discount code for any one of those discount types should override an automatic (no-code) discount for the same type -- i.e., a discount code for All Cart Items:Item Total would override an auto discount for All Cart Items:Item Total, a code for a specific item would override an auto discount for the same item, etc.
If you need a code for one type of discount to disable another type of auto discount, you can create two discounts using the same code, where one applies the discount you want, and the other applies a 0.00 discount to the type of auto discount you want to override.