I start with the place’s Wikipedia page which I attach to its record under the Internet tab. Much like @Davesellers I too use the FamilySearch Place record (although I only recently discovered it). For dates of the coming and going of counties in the U.S. I use the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.
There is the GetGOV addon for central Europe. Unfortunately for my purposes, it adds in all the administrative offices. If most of my database was focused here up to the present day I would probably use it. But for my purpose I only want the big picture county-like hierarchy.
For non-English countries, I use the endonymn of the place instead of the “English” name. I include the English version as the last alternative name so I can search on it. For the endonymn, I do use the spelling using the Latin alphabet as the displayed name but include their native version as alternates. i.e. Москва, Moscow