Another civ to consider is the old standby, Songhai. Combined with the Honor opener, you'll not only get plenty of culture through barb-hunting in the early game, you'll build up gold much faster to save time on building/unit construction & focus on wonders instead (or alternately, to buddy up/ally earlier with cultural or maritime city states).
I rarely play on Pangea maps, but my initial build order would be:
Scout > Monument > Archer > Great Library > Oracle
Using the GL to pick up Philosophy so I could go straight to the Oracle. This will work almost all the time on King & usually on Emperor provided you get some decent tiles around your capital. My first worker would come from whatever nearby CS I didn't plan to buddy up with early (a mercantile or militaristic one, if possible) and my first settler would be bought with the gold I'm reaping by barb-hunting.
Social path would be Tradition opener > Honor opener, and then it varies depending on game circumstances; I absolutely want to have Aristocracy in place when I start the GL, but if I've popped a culture ruin or gotten ahead of things otherwise I'll grab Legalism first. From there it's just sucking up as many other Tradition policies as possible until Piety becomes available. Fourth tree is up in the air--if I'm struggling with money then I'll go Commerce, but generally I'd rather take Patronage to help with my CS allies. Fifth tree is obviously Freedom.
As far as religion goes, with your settings it doesn't need to be an early priority (all but one empire will be able to found one), and with a bit of luck you can even get to a pantheon without having to build a shrine. Ideally you'll find a faithy NW nearby which you can settle, but otherwise you can make up the difference once you're through the initial build order by pounding out shrines in all your cities & allying a religious CS. Note that it
is important to get strong faith production going by the mid-game so that you'll be able to purchase those extra great people after the Industrial (and with Piety closed out, creating Holy Sites with your extra prophets is almost as good as landmarks). The World Church recommendation above would be solid with more AIs in the game, but with this setup I'd go with either Tithe or Ceremonial Burial (more happiness = more golden ages + more population; alternately, more puppet cities if you're going that route). Follower beliefs are varied beyond the obvious Cathedrals--Pagodas, Monasteries, or Mosques are strong in combination, or you can't really go wrong with one of the food-based beliefs (Feed the World or Swords into Plowshares). Agreed with picking an enhancer which will spread your religion more effectively without having to buy lots of missionaries.
One other thing--I find France a bit underwhelming when going for a tall culture win. The +2
per city is nice, but not really a huge boost when you're only founding 3-4 cities in the entire game. Egypt can be a solid choice, especially given the flood plains start bias, as are Songhai, the Aztecs, Ethiopia (the Steles make a huge difference early), or any of a number of other civs. Babylon is actually a decent dark horse contender, as the UA allows you to keep up in science more easily without having to "waste" citizens as scientist specialists.