"À force de prier" was composed by Raymond Bernard with French lyrics by Pierre Delanoë.

When she received the offer to represent Luxembourg at Eurovision in early 1963 she and her family had recently relocated from Athens, Greece, to Paris, France, where she was signed to the Philips-Fontana label.

Mouskouri performed "À force de prier" sixteenth and last on the evening, following Monaco's "L'amour s'en va" by Françoise Hardy.

Although "À force de prier" was only a minor international success for Mouskouri, it won her the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque in France that same year, and her Eurovision appearance also caught the attention of noted French composer Michel Legrand, who went on to write and arrange two major hits for her in the Francophone markets; "Les parapluies de Cherbourg" (1964) and "L'enfant au tambour" (1965).

On 20 May 2006, Mouskouri opened the voting lines for the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 held in Athens, where she was presented as "the best selling artist of all time".