The Tour de France

Why it works

In 1903 the French sports daily L'Auto, losing a circulation war with its rival Le Vélo, launched a bicycle race around the whole of France. The idea came from Géo Lefèvre, assistant to editor Henri Desgrange, who adopted it and pitched it as an event that would keep the country on its feet for 19 days. The BBC describes the first Tour as a publicity stunt to sell newspapers, one that worked well enough to finish off Le Vélo. Historians Hugh Dauncey and Geoff Hare argue its real novelty was selling a product through sport: the paper invented, organised and reported the race itself, serialising the 19-day event into episodes that kept readers buying. The branding outlived the newspaper. When Desgrange introduced a leader's jersey in 1919 he chose yellow, the colour of L'Auto's newsprint, so the race's best-known symbol began as a piece of a publisher's identity. It is studied as the promotion that became a national institution.