The melody appears to quote a fragment of the opening section of Paul Hindemith's "Sonata for Flute and Piano" ("Heiter Bewegt").

The sleeve design depicted the band on road bikes in a paceline, superimposed across an angled representation of the French national flag.

The design was adapted from an image that had appeared on a 1953 Hungarian postage stamp, one of a sport-themed set commemorating the opening the Népstadion (People's Stadium) in Budapest.

For Kraftwerk, "Tour de France" was a departure from the technological tone of the two previous albums, The Man-Machine and Computer World.

It has the most complicated set of variants of any Kraftwerk song, having been variously edited and remixed to the point that there is no completely definitive version.

In October 1999, the recordings were digitally remastered and released, this time as a CD and a twelve-inch single, with a slightly modified version of the original cover design: the faces of former members Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür, who had left the band by 1999, were replaced by faces presumably representing current members Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz.

The track was digitally remastered and re-released as "Tour de France (Kling Klang Analog Mix)" in 1999.