another micro-optimization nit: instead of using an intermediate dict and iterating twice, you could just iterate through countries_by_code.iteritems() once like so:
```python
return sorted(((unicode(k.upper()), unicode(v)) for k, v in
               countries_by_code.iteritems()),
              key=lambda t: uca_collator.sort_key(unicode(t[1])))

```