Saturday 4th December 1926
The Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper announced the first Mille Miglia road race in Italy. It was established by the young count Aymo Maggi and Franco Mazzotti, apparently in response to the Italian Grand Prix being moved from their home town of Brescia to Monza. Together with a group of wealthy associates, they chose a race from Brescia to Rome and back, a figure-eight-shaped course of roughly a thousand Roman miles. Later races followed 12 different routes with varying total lengths, and the open-road endurance race took place 24 times between 1927 and 1957.