Don't know how true it is, or whether it is a modern invention, but the story goes that the pizza created for Margherita of Savoy had basil, mozzarella and tomatoes to represent the 3 colours on the national flag of Italy (green, white and red).
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When I was in Naples a few weeks ago I was told that the Margherita variant was created by the wife of the chef who added a single basil leaf onto the completed pizza. This pizza was served to the royal couple, where the queen (Margherita) was so taken by the creation that the chef decided to name it in her honour.
Also, the flag of Italy was only adopted in the mid 1940's, and Queen Margherita was around about 100 years earlier.
According to the original article, the Margherita pizza was invented after Italian Reunification: "All that changed after Italian unification. While on a visit to Naples in 1889..." I'm not a vexillologist (expert on flags) but looking at the historical flags at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_flags#Unificat... there are many from 1889 that have the green, white and red, e.g. the state flag of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861. So I think the story is plausible, although that doesn't necessarily mean it is true or didn't come after the event.
Fair enough, I stand corrected.
Actually the link SamBam has provided, i.e. to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_colours_of_Italy , explains the tricolour better. It also says "An apocryphal story about the history of pizza holds that on 11 June 1889, Neapolitan pizzamaker Raffaele Esposito created a pizza to honour Margherita of Savoy, who was visiting the city. It was garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil to represent the national colours of Italy, and was named 'Pizza Margherita'".
The red, white and green were commonly used as the Italian colors from the end of the 1700s.[1] Queen Margherita was born in 1850.