Enzo Ferrari left the Italian army in the First World War without any qualifications apart from an ability to shoe mules. The family business had imploded after the death of his father and brother in a global flu epidemic, and Enzo struggled to get a job. Yet he founded an auto empire in which his name lives on 20 years after his death.

Enzo's father, Alfredo, was a blacksmith. Local agriculture and contacts with the expanding railway company made him profitably self-employed. He was the first inhabitant of Modena to afford a car, and broadened his business to include a workshop where his son fell in love with vehicles, and learned about them.

When the debilitated Enzo was discharged from the army's mule team, there was no job to go home to. Fiat turned him down because he'd no qualifications, but he landed one converting horse-drawn carriages and army vehicles into cars. Networking got him a post as a test driver with a sports car company, then with Alfa Romeo, for whom he finished second in his first race.

In 1923, he met the father of a legendary Italian flying ace who admired young Enzo's courage and audacity. So he presented him with the badge of his dead son's squadron: the cavallino rampante, otherwise the prancing horse.

Count Francesco Baracca had painted it on his plane because his squadron, in these early aviation days, was enrolled as a cavalry regiment.

The badge had been taken from the wreckage of the plane after his son's death. Baracca's mother suggested if he put the horse on his car, it would bring him luck.

Enzo added the yellow background from the coat of arms of Modena, nearest town to the mountain village where he was born 110 years ago today. A heavy snowfall prevented his father registering the birth until the 20th, which remained his official birth date.

Scuderia Ferrari became the name of Enzo's company, and the prancing horse its emblem.

Enzo retired from active racing on the birth of his son, Alfredo (Dino), after whose death Enzo wore sunglasses daily as a memorial. And he commemorated him with a car: the Ferrari Dino.

Second World War bombing forced him to move his factory from Modena with its 160 workers, to the present Maranello headquarters. He had some difficulty shaking off his fascist past, and it was 1947 before he made the first car to bear the Ferrari name.

He died aged 90 in Modena, just weeks after his complete retirement from Scuderia Ferrari. Fiat already owned the company, but his name, and the cars, live on.

From 1952, when Alberto Arcari won the first world title in a Ferrari, to Jody Scheckter's 1979 title, the marque took nine championships. Since 2000 they have won six.

The Ferrari Enzo model (400 of them were made between 2002-04) was produced in his memory, first car to bear his name.

It was then the most powerful naturally aspirated production car in the world, a six-litre V12 that did 12 miles to the gallon, with a top speed of 186 mph. They fetch in excess of £700,000 today.