Organised in the years when the automobile was only beginning to assert itself as a practical machine, the race grew out of the enthusiasm generated by the 1894 Paris–Rouen, which had been run not as a race but as a concours, with a steam-powered vehicle judged ineligible for the top prize despite being the quickest. The Automobile Club de France and its contemporaries wished to demonstrate that motorcars could sustain long-distance travel at competitive speeds, and a return trip between Paris and Bordeaux — a combined route of more than 1,100 kilometres — provided an appropriately dramatic test.
The official regulations specified that competing vehicles must be four-seaters. This stipulation would prove decisive in determining the outcome.
The event started in Paris and ran south to Bordeaux, with entrants then required to complete the return leg back to the capital. Among the leading cars were vehicles from Panhard & Levassor and Peugeot, the two marques that dominated early French motorsport.
Émile Levassor, driving a 1,205 cc Panhard & Levassor two-seater, immediately asserted himself at the front. He overtook the Marquis de Dion, who led early but was slowed by water stops required by his steam car. Levassor led continuously from that point, stopping periodically to check his car's components. He arrived in Bordeaux several hours before anyone expected a leader to appear — so early, in fact, that the relief driver assigned to share the return leg was still asleep in a hotel, and no one knew which hotel.
Levassor accepted the situation without complaint. He alerted the race organisers of his arrival time, had sandwiches and champagne, took a brief walk, and departed for Paris again at 2:30 in the morning. En route north, Baron René de Knyff encountered him and was so astonished by Levassor's pace that he nearly crashed his own car in surprise. Levassor completed the 1,178-kilometre round trip in 48 hours and 48 minutes, arriving in Paris almost six hours ahead of the next finisher, Louis Rigoulot. His average speed across the entire distance was 24.5 kilometres per hour — an extraordinary figure for an era when paved roads were rare and the automobile was a novelty. Levassor reportedly remarked afterward: "Some 50 km before Paris I had a rather luxurious snack in a restaurant which helped me. But I feel a little tired."
Despite this achievement, Levassor was denied the official victory. Because both he and Rigoulot were driving two-seater cars, neither was eligible under the race regulations, which had been written for four-seaters. The official winner was declared to be Paul Koechlin, who finished third overall in his Peugeot — a four-seater that complied with the rules — but who crossed the finish line eleven hours slower than Levassor. The result provoked immediate outcry.
The injustice of the 1895 result shaped how the Automobile Club de France structured future events. The 1896 Paris–Marseille–Paris was organised so that the fastest finisher would be the outright winner, closing the loophole that had denied Levassor his due recognition.
The race also demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that motor cars and their drivers were capable of sustained long-distance competition. The public enthusiasm it generated confirmed that such events were commercially and culturally viable, laying the foundation for the explosion of city-to-city racing that would follow over the next decade.
The Paris–Bordeaux–Paris has subsequently been retrospectively designated as the first Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France by some French sources, a numbering scheme that would make the 1906 French Grand Prix at Le Mans the ninth edition of that title. The ACF itself endorsed this retrospective framing in 1933, though some members of the organisation dismissed it as a fabrication motivated by a desire to claim priority over other national motor racing traditions.
Levassor did not live long enough to see his legacy fully acknowledged. He died in 1897 from injuries sustained in the 1896 Paris–Marseille–Paris race, having struck a dog on the road that caused his car to overturn. His statue stands in Paris, near the Porte Maillot, as a permanent memorial to the man who effectively won the first motor race and was denied the prize.