I am trying to style only part (word/letters) of a choice list option similar to this:

This is text containing <span style="color:red;">Colored</span> Text.

The example above works just fine. However if I try to do anything simmilar into <select> element, it doesn't render the span tag at all.

<select>
  <option value="volvo">Volvo</option>
  <option value="alfaromeo"><span style="color:red">Alfa</span> Romeo</option>
</select>

Also you can specify style within the option tag, but this affects the whole choice, rather than a just part of it.

To sum it up, is there any good way to do this apart from making your own HTML element that looks like a select?

DEMO