We extend the octree subdivision process from Cartesian coordinates to spherical coordinates to develop more efficient space-partitioning structure for surface models. As an application of the proposed structure, we apply the octree subdivision in spherical coordinates ("S-Octree") to geometry compression in progressive mesh coding. Most previous researches on geometry-driven progressive mesh compression are devoted to improve predictability of geometry information. Unlike this, we focus on the efficient information storage for the space-partitioning structure. By eliminating void space at initial stage and aligning the R axis for the important components in geometry information, the S-Octree improves the efficiency in geometry information coding. Several meshes are tested in the progressive mesh coding based on the S-Octree and the results for performance parameters are presented.