How To Rank in Different Countries?

I'm finding this to be a factor that's completely out of my control. Let's say I'm doing seo for a very competitive term like "cars". Now obviously the US is my target market and that's where I am climbing the rankings via all of my seo efforts. But there are other markets that I would love to tap into such as Canada, Australia, UK etc. but big G.ca or .co.uk have completely different rankings and more often than not my sites are berried on the 5th page somewhere. So I just keep doing seo work and keep seeing my rankings increase in US and slowly in the other countries. Now I know that local search is a big factor, but for a broad term like "cars" it shouldn't matter. My question is what are the factors that can help me rank better globally not just the states?

bump bump, come on, there must be some seo pros here who have some advice to offer on the topic