Bennett offered the Automobile Club de France a trophy in 1899 to be contested annually between national automobile clubs. The competition was explicitly national in character: entries came from country clubs rather than individual manufacturers, and each club was limited to three cars. First contestants included France, Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy. Each club paid a 3,000-franc entry fee, and the winning country earned the right to host the following year's race, to be held between 15 May and 15 August over a total distance of 550 to 650 kilometres.
The formula required cars to carry two seats side by side, with driver and riding mechanic each weighing at least 60 kilograms. Cars had to weigh at least 400 kilograms empty and be built entirely within the country under whose national colours they raced. This last rule was the formula's most consequential constraint: it tied technical development directly to national identity and excluded cross-border manufacturing arrangements that were common in the industry. Only the driver and mechanic were permitted to work on the car during the race, a restriction on outside assistance that would persist into early Grand Prix regulations.
The 1900 cup ran from Paris to Lyons, with Charron taking line honours. The 1901 race was held in conjunction with the Paris–Bordeaux event, won by Henri Fournier in a Mors. The 1902 Gordon Bennett Cup ran as part of the Paris–Vienna race, and was won by Selwyn Edge in a Napier, giving Britain hosting rights for 1903.
The 1903 race was the first international motor event held in Ireland. Because motor racing on public roads was illegal in Britain, the venue moved to County Kildare, where local laws were adapted and the Light Locomotives (Ireland) Bill was passed on 27 March 1903. The 528-kilometre closed-circuit course was policed by 7,000 officers with strict orders to keep spectators off the roads. As a gesture to Ireland, the British team adopted shamrock green, which became known as British racing green — a colour identity that endures in motorsport to the present day. Camille Jenatzy won the race in a Mercedes, driving under German colours.
The 1904 cup ran over 342 miles near Homburg, Germany, with Léon Théry of France winning for Richard-Brasier. The 1905 edition, the last of the series, used a mountainous 137-kilometre circuit near Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne. Théry and Richard-Brasier won again, completing two consecutive victories that gave France the right to organise the 1906 race — a right the ACF exercised by abandoning the Gordon Bennett format entirely and launching the Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France.
The three-car-per-country limit proved increasingly problematic as France's automobile industry expanded. By 1904, twenty-nine French manufacturers competed for just three places. The ACF pushed for a new system based on industry size, which was rejected by other national bodies but led to the formation of the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR) in 1904 — the predecessor of the FIA. When France organised the 1906 event without national entry limits, it effectively ended the Gordon Bennett era.
Despite its short run, the Gordon Bennett formula established foundational precedents: closed-circuit racing over public roads, national racing colours, prescribed weight minimums, and the restriction to on-board personnel only for repairs. These elements carried directly into Grand Prix racing and influenced how the sport was governed for decades.