The English county has submitted its application with Tour organisers Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), with the region's tourist board heading up the bid.

The first two days of the race, the Grand Départ, are held in a new location outside France every two years, and Yorkshire will be competing with Barcelona, Venice, Berlin and Scotland to stage the event in four years time.

Welcome to Yorkshire, which is leading the bid and been speaking to French officials for nearly two years already, said the route would take in Scarborough, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, York and the Yorkshire Dales.

A public campaign has been launched by Welcome to Yorkshire, backed they claimed by Britain's Mark Cavendish, the winner of the green jersey in last year's Tour de France.

"It is the world's biggest annual sporting event, with 88 million people watching it every day on TV, and it offers massive coverage," said Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire. 

"We are making a series of pitches which will culminate in a big meeting in two months to try to persuade the organisers that Yorkshire is the place for them."

There is massive competition to host the Grand Départ of the Tour, usually a five-day affair leading up to a weekend's racing, with two or three days of pre-race formalities including the team presentation, followed by a short prologue time trial on the Saturday and a road-race stage on the Sunday.

If the bid is successful, it would be the second time that the Grand Départ has started in England as London and the South East hosted the event in 2007.

That generated more £88 million ($140 million/€105 million) for the area. 

Tour organisers are due to visit Yorkshire to study the proposed route in May.

But Verity may have incurred the wrath of Scotland, with what many will consider inappropriate comments.

"Ironically [Scotland] by then may or may not be an independent country by the time the Tour comes here – but they're getting English taxpayers' money to bring the tour to Scotland," he said.

Scotland launched its bid to host Tour de France Grand Départ in January 2011.

But Verity appeared to dismiss their chances.

"We're in competition with Barcelona, with Venice, with Berlin, but we believe Yorkshire has more to offer than all of those places and we believe we're in with a serious chance," he said.

The year's race is scheduled to start in the Belgian city of Liège while in 2014 the bidders are expected to include Doha and Florence.

Rotterdam hosted the Grand Départ the last time it started outside France, in 2010.

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January 2011: Scotland bids to host Tour de France Grand Départ