Initiated in 1901 by the Touring Club de France in association with the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway company, the coastal road bypassing the Estérel massif was inaugurated with great pomp in 1903 with a parade of two hundred cars followed by numerous cyclists. The road was immediately nicknamed the Corniche d'Or (Golden corniche) and integrated into the Nationale 7. Victim of its overcrowding after the birth of paid holidays and impossible to further widen, the corniche was downgraded in 1938. The recent overhaul of the French road network based on the regionalization of the former national roads has transformed it into three departmental roads divided between the Alpes-Maritimes and the Var departments.