At one time you could only buy cycling equipment at your local cycle shop, if they had what you wanted or you had to hope they could order it and then you would have to wait for it to come and hope it was the right size, colour or price.
The Giro dÂ’Italia has a fine history behind it, like the Tour de France it was started to publicise a newspaper, just like the Tour de France the organisers made the leaders jersey the same colour as the paper, yellow in France from the LÂ’Auto newspaper and pink in Italy from the La Gazzetta dello Sport.