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I believe that the 500 No2 was a Westley Richards cartridge as they are a standard in their improved martini. A bottle necked round is just perfect for getting around the curve of a martini type action and I feel it was no coincidence that WR developed this round ( I think anyway ) and it being used in their improved action. When they developed this action the 500 3" would have been a very popular round and this would not work in it. To promote the new martini it would have made sense to have a round that gave fairly close ballistics to the 500 3" but allow it to work it their own rifle, hopefully making it a good seller.

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IMHO this was the reason for another Westley-Richards cartridge too, incidentially named "No.1", the .500/.450 No.1 BPExpress, 2 3/4" case. Just like the .577/.500 No.2 BPE is close to the .500 3" BPE, merely bottlenecked, so is the .500/.450 No.1 BPE to the popular .450 3 ¼" BPE.
At least two other cartridges originated with the difficulty of the Martini type action to digest long, straight cases:
The British military selected the Martini action as their then preferred military rifle, but wanted to use Alexander Henry's barrel and load. Henry's original cartridge, a coiled brass, straight .450 3 ¼", did not fit a Martini action of reasonable length, so they designed the bottlenecked .577/.450 Martini-Henry to take Henry's powder charge and bullet.
When gun and ammo supply from Germany dried up during and post WW1, the most popular hunting cartridge in Switzerland was the 9.3x72R. But this long, almost straight number did not work with the Swiss domestic Haemmerli Martini actions, so they designed their 9.3x53R Swiss, factory loaded to merely copy the ballistics of the 9.3x72R Swiss factory load.

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