I know Excel asks me, when it sees text values that have only numeric characters, whether I should "sort anything that looks like a number, as a number". But that's not what we're talking about here; "100A" wouldn't look like a number to Excel. Off-hand I don't think you can get around the functions and helper columns.

If it's a repetitive task, you can write a program to sort it correctly and transparently—that is, to add the helping columns, do the sort and then delete the helping columns. That's even more work, but it's one-time work and after that you can do the task without having to set it up carefully. But other than that, I don't see a way.