It's not true that there are no major geographic landmarks on the border between France and Italy, the border departs from the Alpine Ridge-line very few times (notably Tenda and Briga). Barring tunnels, there are no passes over the mountains below 1700m (5577 ft) north of Nice.

The Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont was a successor state of the premodern County (later Duchy) of Savoy. The historic county of Savoy, which had been the heart of the polity prior to the growth of Turin, along with the County of Nice, were ceded to France in the Treaty of Turin in 1860; seizing on nationalist sentiment and weakness of the other Italian states, the Kingdom of Sardinia had pushed to conquer the entire peninsula. With French help, the Kingdom of Sardinia defeated Austria and annexed the Lombard portion of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venice (a constituent state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) along with the Italian states of Modena, Parma and Tuscany. In return for their support, the French were given Nice and Savoy, creating the modern border. This was rather controversial; although Savoy was sparsely populated and mostly french-speaking, Nice and the surrounding county had a very large Italian population.