You can learn every case but it’s way too much work and not reliable. What you have to realize is that every preposition express different single specific thing, such as goal, cause, mean, … Does this ring a bell ?

In french you’ll have this preposition used for a,c and another one for b and d while in English you’ll have one for a and d and another for b and c.

For example, to in english in used to express many different things, and being able to differentiate them helps a lot to find the preposition in French. If you can replace to with in order to for example, it expresses goal (You should then use “pour” most of the times). In “*I’m the first one to do that” obviously it’s not at all the same thing that’s expressed, so it will likely be a different preposition in French (in this case, it’s à). Do you get the idea ?

You should try looking into that. You’ll surely find things if you search “cause, moyen, but” (cause, mean, goal), there are others but I can’t remember ^^ Learn to identify what case it is, then learn what preposition is used in each case, there are rules for that.

I hope that answers your question.