With the development of automobile transportation in the early 1910s and following an enquiry from the Touring Club of Italy, the FIA General Assembly started to discuss how to facilitate and regulate motorised travel between countries. The main objective of these discussions was to create a document to prove that a vehicle crossing a border for travel would cross the border back to its country of origin and would not be sold in another country. Fees collected to issue these Carnets de Passages en Douane (CPDs) would cover the responsibility of customs penalties in case of violation of car importing rules.

At that time, all documents had to be issued manually. With different types of states, languages, models of central and local governance, the border crossing process was very complicated.

The debate went on for more than two years and in 1913, the organisation finally agreed on a common format for the document and on a process to use it. During the year, more than 12 Clubs reported on successful negotiations with their respective governments and adoption of CPDs. The number of pages of each CPD depended on the number of borders to be crossed. The format of the document changed throughout the years but the principle remained the same.

In June 1949, CPDs were officially recognised by the International Convention on Touring, on Commercial Motor Vehicles and on the Transport of Goods by Road in Geneva, and five years later, the United Nations recognised the FIA and the Alliance Internationale de Tourisme (AIT) as the two international organisations with the rights to issue CPDs (in 1954 for private cars and in 1956 for commercial vehicles).

The CPD is still required today in numerous countries around the world for the temporary admission of private automobiles, commercial vehicles or other categories of motor vehicles.