The Coppa Florio (or Florio Cup) was an automobile race first held in Italy in 1900 as the Coppa Brescia. It was renamed in 1905 when Vincenzo Florio offered the initial 50,000 Lira prize money and a cup designed by Polak of Paris. The cup was to be awarded to the car maker who gained the most wins in the first seven races, beginning with the race held in 1905. In the event, the first seven races were all won by different manufacturers, but Peugeot won the eighth race in 1925 and thus secured the cup with its second win. However, the competition for the cup continued after Lucien Rosengart, then a director of Peugeot, offered to make it available again.
The Brescia race ran along the route Brescia-Cremona-Mantua-Brescia. In 1908, the race used the Circuito di Bologna: Bologna-Castelfranco Emilia-Sant'Agata Bolognese-San Giovanni in Persiceto-Bologna. After 1914, most of the Coppa Florio races were co-organized with the Targa Florio at the Circuito delle Madonie circuit outside Palermo, Sicily, running four or five laps, 108 km each. Only in 1927 did the race move to Saint-Brieuc, in honour of Peugeot's second win in 1925. The race attracted teams from around Europe as well as the 1921 Grand Prix Sunbeams from England and saw such luminaries as Sir Henry Segrave and Jean Chassagne competing. The winners were: