Sir David Lionel Goldsmid-Stern-Salomons, 2nd Bt. (1851-1925), was the nephew of Sir David Salomons, 1st Bt. (1797-1873), the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London (elected in 1855) and a leading figure in the struggle for Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom, from whom he inherited the title and the estate of Broomhill, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. The latter is now the Salomons Museum, a part of Canterbury Christ Church University.

Sir David, the 2nd Bt., attended University College, London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1874, the year in which he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. With an interest in science and mechanics from a young age, he developed a passion for various modes of transportation, eventually becoming a pioneer of 'horseless vehicles.' On 15 October 1895 he helped to organize a show at Tunbridge Wells of a number of self-propelled vehicles, including a tricycle, which delighted an audience of nearly 10,000 people. Sir David, who during the same year had imported the first Peugeot car to Britain, became Vice President of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and was the founder in 1897 and first President of The Royal Automobile Club.

The design of this cup and cover is based on one of a small group of well-known examples by Lamerie. A cup and cover dated 1742, formerly in the possession of Crichton Brothers, is illustrated P.A.S. Phillips, Paul de Lamerie, London, 1935, p. 107, pl. CXXXVIII.