Ciro's solution about an SVG Data URI background containing the text is very clever.
However, it won't work in IE if you just add the plain SVG source to the data URI.
In order to get around this and make it work in IE9 and up, encode the SVG to base64. This is a great tool.
So this:
background:url('data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><text x="5%" y="5%" font-size="30" fill="red">I love SVG!</text></svg>');
Becomes this:
background:url('data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjx0ZXh0IHg9IjUlIiB5PSI1JSIgZm9udC1zaXplPSIzMCIgZmlsbD0icmVkIj5JIGxvdmUgU1ZHITwvdGV4dD48L3N2Zz4=');
Tested and it works in IE9-10-11, WebKit (Chrome 37, Opera 23) and Gecko (Firefox 31).