Courbet was the lead ship of her class, the first dreadnoughts built for the French Navy. She was completed before World War I and named in honour of Admiral Amédée Courbet. She spent the war in the Mediterranean, helping to sink the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser Zenta in August 1914. She spent the rest of the war providing cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea. Although upgraded several times before World War II, she was not deemed to be a first-class battleship and spent most of the interwar period as a gunnery training ship.