The company was formed in 1883 after de Dion saw a toy locomotive in a store window in 1881 and asked the toymakers to build another.

[2] The Marquis de Dion entered one of them in an 1887 trial, "Europe's first motoring competition", the brainchild of one M. Fossier of cycling magazine Le Vélocipède.

[2] That figure must be viewed with considerable care, because the first official land speed record, set in 1898, was 63.15 km/h (39.24 mph).

The vehicle survives, is in road-worthy condition, and has been a regular entry in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run.

Following that singular success, the company offered steam tricycles, with boilers between the front wheels and two-cylinder engines.

An axle beam carried the weight of the vehicle with the non-weight-bearing driveshafts or drive chains articulated separately alongside it.

[a] On 22 July 1894, during the Paris–Rouen race,[6] it averaged 18.7 km/h (11.6 mph) over the 126 km (78 mi) route, but was disqualified because it needed both a driver and a stoker.

Trépardoux, a staunch supporter of steam, resigned in 1894 as the company turned to internal combustion vehicles.

[7] Proving troublesome at its designed speed of 900 rpm (throwing bearings and running rough),[5] when Bouton increased the revs, the problems vanished.

[7] In 1898, Louis Renault had a De Dion-Bouton modified with fixed drive shaft and ring and pinion gear, making "perhaps the first hot rod in history".

Until World War I, De Dion-Boutons had an unusual decelerator pedal which reduced engine speed and ultimately applied a transmission brake.

De Dion-Bouton supplied engines to vehicle manufacturers such as Hanzer and Société Parisienne who mounted a 2.5 horsepower (1.9 kW) unit directly on the front axle of their front-wheel-drive voiturette the 'Viktoria Combination'.

The cars were also becoming more and more conventional in styling, with the radiator moving in front of the engine and the clutch changing from a hand lever to a pedal.

A pair of works 10 CV (7.5 kW) De Dion-Boutons, in the hands of Cormier and Collignon, ran in the 1907 Peking to Paris rally, without success.

[15] During World War I, the company made gun parts, armoured vehicles, and aircraft engines, as well as cars and trucks.

[14] In Dublin, during the Easter Rising of 1916, which began the Irish War of Independence, The O'Rahilly drove his De Dion Bouton up to the Irish HQ in O'Connell Street and, discovering that the Rising he had planned and trained soldiers for, and then tried to prevent, was actually happening, he drove it into a barricade, walked into the GPO and said: "I've helped to wind the clock, I've come to hear it strike."

The first railcars were produced in the early 1920s, with the Chemin de Fer des Côtes-du-Nord receiving its first vehicles in 1923.