Wikipedia maintains a listing of countries where McDonald's exists and the list numbers (as of this writing in June 2012) 123 "countries" but at least 20 of those "countries" are not independent countries at all. Therefore, McDonald's claim of restaurants existing in 119 countries is inflated by non-independent countries.
In March 2011, the Associated Press reported that Subway was the world's largest restaurant chain, "Subway had 33,749 restaurants worldwide at the end of last year, according to the company. McDonald's Corp. had 32,737, according a regulatory filing." As of this writing, Subway claims to have 36,972 restaurants in 100 countries. Again, many of these "countries" are not independent and are merely territories.
Ultimately, we can confidently agree that the number of McDonald's Restaurants worldwide is more than 33,000.
