The name Alfa Romeo arrived in 1915 when an enterprising Neapolitan engineer, Nicola Romeo, saved the company from an early failure caused by the outbreak of war.

The magazine Auto Italiana, in its September 20, 1932 issue, reports an article in the French newspaper l'AUTO in which the origins of the names of the most famous car brands are indicated. The author comments: "For our Alfa Romeo, the newspaper explains exactly the second part of the article, recalling the engineer Nicola Romeo, but takes the wrong way by saying that it corresponds to the Greek Alfa, i.e. to the letter "A" the first of the alphabet. Instead, as everybody knows, in Italy Alfa is equivalent to A.L.F.A. initials of Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, the new Italian company that took over the original factory of the Italian Darracq, a name that had little luck among us and many mischievously crippled in Barracq to understand that those cars were shacks ... Our good public always fierce critic and more motorist in cafes than on the main roads, He took no account whatsoever of the fact that the car was then standing and often blamed the cars for the inexperienced and overly demanding drivers and our horrible pre-war roads".

The name Alfa Romeo came in 1915 when an enterprising Neapolitan engineer, Nicola Romeo, saved the company from early bankruptcy caused by the outbreak of war. The company received a new impetus and, after the war interlude, during which it produced aviation engines, artillery shells, motor-compressors and flamethrowers, it went back to producing cars, thought about racing and became a legend. At the end of the war it was complicated and laborious to return to civil production after having built artillery shells, but once again Romeo demonstrated his talent as an entrepreneur by restarting car production. Another confirmation of Nicola Romeo's farsightedness came from the impulse he was able to give to sports activities.

Alfa Romeos won prestigious races, but what he was aiming for was success in the World Championship. And there was also a world championship triumph in 1925, with the P2 designed by Vittorio Jano. In December of the same year, S.A. Ing. Nicola Romeo & C was dissolved. Pasquale Gallo was appointed general manager while Nicola Romeo, to compensate him for his partial ouster, was offered the position of president, a position he held until 1928, the year in which he moved to his villa in Magreglio, above Lake Como, where he spent the last years of his life and where he died on 15 August 1938.