How to get Google Maps API to set the correct zoom level for a country?

Is there a was of automatically setting the zoom level based on the size of the country that the map has been centered on?

maps.google.com does exactly what I need, so, for example, if I search for Russia I get a zoom level such that Russia just fits on screen, and when I search for Cuba I get a higher zoom level so that Cuba just fits.

Is there some way of giving the Maps Api a country location and getting an appropriate zoom level.

If not, I guess that I would have to manually (ugh!) create my own table for this information. Or is this information freely available somewhere?

For V3 this code worked for me:

var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
   geocoder.geocode( { 'address': address}, function(results, status) {
      if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
        map.setCenter(results[0].geometry.location);
        map.fitBounds(results[0].geometry.viewport);
      }
    });

For API v3 check this answer.

You can use the Google Maps Client-side Geocoder to get the bounding box of the country, as in the following example:

// API version 2
var geocoder = new GClientGeocoder();

geocoder.getLocations("Russia", function (locations) { 

    var north = locations.Placemark[0].ExtendedData.LatLonBox.north;
    var south = locations.Placemark[0].ExtendedData.LatLonBox.south;
    var east  = locations.Placemark[0].ExtendedData.LatLonBox.east;
    var west  = locations.Placemark[0].ExtendedData.LatLonBox.west;

    var bounds = new GLatLngBounds(new GLatLng(south, west), 
                                   new GLatLng(north, east));

    map.setCenter(bounds.getCenter(), map.getBoundsZoomLevel(bounds));
});

// API version 3
// ... set north, south, east and west ...
var bounds = new google.maps.LatLngBounds(new google.maps.LatLng(south, west), 
                                          new google.maps.LatLng(north, east));
map.fitBounds(bounds);

The screenshots below show the results of the above technique when searching for Russia and Cuba: