RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Colony-stimulating factors such as filgrastim may increase the number of immune cells found in bone marrow or peripheral blood and may help a person's immune system recover from the side effects of chemotherapy. Peripheral stem cell transplantation may allow the doctor to give higher doses of chemotherapy drugs and kill more tumor cells. It is not yet known which treatment regimen is more effective for breast cancer.