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Handlebar wrap is more of an art than a science, and there's no single way that it's been done over the years. And sometimes not all methods are practical; for instance, bar-end shifters make it problematic to plug the tape at the bar end. Some bikes built by Alex Singer back in the day have tape wrapped both bottom-up and top-down: one piece of tape would start at the top, one at the bar-end, and they'd both end at the brake hood.
Anyway, the primary reason that modern tape is almost never wrapped top-end is that it reverses the direction that the "edges" of the tape are facing. In places like the ramps behind the hoods, the result is that the hand is more likely to catch on the tape edges and curl them up.
This isn't much of a problem with cotton cloth tape because it's very thin and stiff, so the edge is small and won't budge. But modern tapes are much thicker and usually more stretchy.
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