The French Classic Races are a series of Group One Thoroughbred horse races run annually on the flat. The races were instituted in the nineteenth century, taking the British Classic Races as a model. In the original scheme, one race, the Poule d'Essai, served as the equivalent to the first two British classics, but was later divided into separate races for colts and fillies. The Grand Prix de Paris, for many years the most important and valuable of the French classics, had no British equivalent.