A letter in The Times (London), January 16, 1905, signed by Oswald Crawfurd, describes auction bridge as first played in 1904.

A book by "John Doe" (Francis Reginald Roe), published in Allahabad, India, in 1899, puts forward auction bridge as an invention of three members of the Indian Civil Service stationed at an isolated community, designed as a three-handed form of bridge to compensate the lack of a fourth player.

[6] In the earlier superseded Auction Bridge rules, the dealer opens the bidding and must declare to win at least the odd trick in a trump suit or at No-trump.

[jargon] In UK Auction Bridge, as it was a gambling game, bids were ranked by point value of the contract then level.

During WWI, a variant called Plafond (ceiling) was created in France by adding the idea of "contract", where only tricks bid and made counted towards Game or Slam, over-tricks were bonuses scored above the line.