Leaflet Marker Tooltip centered

Question

I want to display the tooltip centered (inside) of the marker.

Background

I want to display a count for each marker (first -> last) and I've found out I could do that with tooltip (Any better suggestions)

so my marker looks like this now,

var marker = L.marker(latlng, {icon: blueIcon}).bindTooltip(feature.properties.count, 
                    {
                permanent: true, 
                direction: 'right'
            });

I couldn't find any further documentation on direction centered or similar.

The tooltip provides the functionality to see which was the first and last marker however it seems not to be best practice.

So my questions:

• Is there a better solution than tooltip?
• how can I display the count centered in the marker?

Example

Current:

wanted:

(Here I would make the background invis so I could just see the text.)

Answer 1

I've found out you could add direction: center. Ref: http://leafletjs.com/reference-1.0.0.html#tooltip-direction

I've solved my problem with DivIcon

var numberIcon = L.divIcon({
                    className: "number-icon-default",
                    iconSize: [25, 41],
                    iconAnchor: [10, 44],
                    popupAnchor: [3, -40],
                    html: feature.properties.count        
              });

with the css like

    .number-icon-default
{
    background-image: url("#{request.contextPath}/lib/leaflet/images/marker-icon.png");
    text-align:center;
    color:Black;   
    text-shadow: 1px 1px #000000;
    font-size: large;
    font-weight: bold;
}

Result