DETROIT— Toyota Motor Corp. has taken the first-quarter global automotive sales lead from General Motors Corp., selling 2.41 million vehicles to GM’s 2.25 million over the first three months of the year.

GM said Wednesday its first-quarter sales dropped across the globe by less than 1 percent, but Toyota said its sales were up 2.7 percent during the January-through-March period.

GM barely won the global sales race with Japan-based Toyota last year. Toyota overtook General Motors as the world’s top automaker in global vehicle production last year.

A record 64 percent of GM’s sales came from outside the United States.

Strong demand in Europe supported Toyota’s worldwide sales.

GM posted record sales in three of its four regions, but a 10 percent drop in North America pulled down the overall numbers. Sales were up 8 percent outside of North America, the Detroit automaker said.

“While the challenges of the U.S. economy continue to put pressure on the automotive industry there, we saw nearly 20 percent growth in the Latin America, Africa and Middle East, and 6 percent growth in the Asia Pacific region,” John Middlebrook, GM vice president of global sales, said in a statement.

Toyota said output of popular, fuel-efficient small cars such as the Corolla model grew strongly in China, while production of pickup trucks rose steadily in Thailand during the quarter.

Some analysts say it’s only a matter of time before Toyota — which built its business in the decades after World War II by imitating American automakers — overtakes GM in terms of annual global sales as well as production.

In the Japanese fiscal year through March 2008, Toyota’s global output rose 6.4 percent from a year earlier to 9.66 million vehicles.

Honda Motor Co., Japan’s No. 2 automaker, said its global production rose 4.5 percent from a year ago to 1.02 million vehicles in the January-March quarter.

Nissan Motor Co. said its global output rose 9.4 percent from a year ago to 950,878 vehicles during the quarter.