Interface will not rename under systemd

I'm trying to rename a network interface on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS, but am unable to do so. Systemd names my primary network interface enp0s3. I want to rename this interface to eth0.

According to the systemd.link documentation (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.link.html) I created a file called /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.link with the following content:

[Match]
MACAddress=08:00:27:f7:57:e5

[Link]
Name=eth0

The MAC address matches the one given in the `ip a` output for the interface. I also renamed the enp0s3 entries to eth0 in the /etc/network/interfaces file. Although, when I reboot the machine, the interface is still named enp0s3.

The following entries in the dmesg output are interesting to me:

> e1000 0000:00:03.0 eth0: (PCI:33MHz:32-bit) 08:00:27:f7:57:e5
> e1000 0000:00:03.0 eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection
> e1000 0000:00:03.0 enp0s3: renamed from eth0

So apparently, it starts out as eth0, but is then renamed back to enp0s3 again. I am not sure why?

When I try to debug the link file, I get the following output:

$ sudo udevadm test-builtin net_setup_link /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.link
calling: test-builtin
=== trie on-disk ===
tool version: 229
file size: 6841778 bytes
header size 80 bytes
strings 1755242 bytes
nodes 5086456 bytes
Load module index
timestamp of 'etc/systemd/network' changed
Parsed configuration file /lib/systemd/network/99-default.link
Parsed configuration file /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.link
Created link configuration context.
unable to open device '/sys/etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.link'

Unload module index
Unloaded link configuration context.

The line about it being unable to open the device seems odd. I'm not sure why it's trying that, there is no etc directory under /sys at all, should I create it?

I also tried disabling the /lib/systemd/network/99-default.link file and set the NamePolicy option to mac, but to no avail.
Any insights into why my interface name doesn't stick is very welcome.