When the seventh motor show opened in Paris in 1922, Citroën was just three years old. The company had started just one year after the end of the First World War. But that didn’t mean that its founder, André Citroën, was reticent about promoting his cars. To mark the opening of the car show, he had an aeroplane skywrite “Citroën” across the Paris skyline, trailing above the Eiffel Tower.

By the time of the 1925 Paris Expo, just another three years on, his vision was even greater – this time he rented the Eiffel Tower, surely the most iconic landmark in France.

The Expo had turned Paris into a vast and stylish art deco landscape, with major buildings illuminated at night. But literally rising above them all was the Eiffel Tower, which had three sides covered in 250,000 lightbulbs which needed 370 miles of wiring. The bulbs spelled out “Citroën” in letters 92ft high.

Autocar’s correspondent was on the scene to report:

“At first the tower is outlined in luminous lines and then a certain number of small stars and five or six bigger ones with the tail of a comet are seen. At the same time, bright flames shooting skyward appear at the top of the tower.

“As the tails of the comets gradually lengthen to form letters making up the word ‘Citroën’, two signs, red and blue in colour, bearing the dates 1889-1925, the former the date of the tower’s creation, become luminous, and are almost immediately replaced by the double chevrons which are the Citroën trademark.

“This may fairly be described as the most remarkable and complete flashing advertising sign yet created.”

The illuminations lit the skyline far beyond Paris. Charles Lingbergh, who was the first man to fly the Atlantic, is said to have used the sign to help navigate him safely to land at Le Bourget Airport in 1927.

For nine years the lights stayed lit, reminding everyone about Citroën cars every night. But by 1934 financial problems within Citroën meant that the lights were finally taken down. Just a year later André Citroën himself passed away into history.