There's a big range of bikes that are suitable for commuting. On one end you can absolutely commute with a bicycle designed for road racing, you just may have difficulty mounting fenders, may not have rack mounts, may have geometry that handles poorly with weight on a rack, and won't be able to mount as wide tires, which are more comfortable/shock absorbing and can be better if you're placing a lot of weight on a rack. A touring bike of course handles all these issues but can be genuinely slower if you're doing a lot of rides that are essentially unloaded, and in my experience feels a bit less fun than a more performance oriented bike. A cyclocross bike can be a good medium, with lighter stock builds than most touring bikes, more responsive geometry, but possibly better provisions for mounting racks and definitely better ability to mount wide tires and fenders. Bikes like the Surly Cross Check and the Specialized Tricross are popular for this kind of use since their design isn't purely race oriented.

You want a gearing range that's appropriate for your terrain and how you ride, but it's very possible that proper touring gearing is overkill for commuting, unless you want to transport large amounts of luggage (like groceries). If I'm riding for less than an hour to commute somewhere, I can expend a lot more energy on climbs than I would touring because I don't need to maintain that effort for very long.

I have two bikes I use for commuting: a proper touring bike, a Surly Long Haul Trucker with a mountain crankset, 11-32 cassette, and bar end shifters; and a Trek XO-1 Cyclocross bike that I ride with a road wheelset and tires and no rack or other commuting accessories (except lights of course) and lately I've been riding the cross bike with a backpack more because it's more fun and genuinely a little faster. I also really find I like integrated brake shifter levers.