Yeah the way that was worded it was ambiguous, the number given could have referred to either the number of McDonalds outside the US or the number of other countries since both had been brought up previously. I myself on first reading it was like "I'm pretty sure there are more than 194 McDonalds outside of the US" before I realized they were referring to the number of countries there are.

I'm not sure I'd even try to give an exact number of countries since that changes somewhat depending on who and when you ask and how picky you want to be about what qualifies as a country.