Bertha Benz drives from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in the first long distance automobile trip, commemorated as the Bertha Benz Memorial Route since 2008.

Bertha Benz was a German automotive pioneer. She was the business partner, investor and wife of automobile inventor Carl Benz. On 5 August 1888, she was the first person to drive an internal-combustion-engined automobile over a long distance, field testing the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, inventing brake lining and solving several practical issues during the journey of 105 km. In doing so, she brought the Patent-Motorwagen worldwide attention and got their company its first sales. Bertha Benz was not allowed to study in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and her financial and practical engineering contributions have long been overlooked until the 21st century.

Mannheim, officially the University City of Mannheim, is the second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the state capital, and Germany's 21st-largest city, with a population of over 315,000. It is located at the border with Rhineland-Palatinate. The city is the cultural and economic centre of the Rhine-Neckar, Germany's seventh-largest metropolitan region, with nearly 2.4 million inhabitants.

Pforzheim is a city of over 125,000 inhabitants in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany.

The Bertha Benz Memorial Route is a German tourist and theme route in Baden-Württemberg and member of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. It opened in 2008 and follows the tracks of the world's first long-distance road trip by a vehicle powered with an internal combustion engine, in 1888. The trip was taken by Bertha Benz in the world's first automobile, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, created by her husband, Carl Benz.