In wireless ad hoc networks, nodes communicate with each other using multihop routed transmission in which hop-by-hop cooperative diversity can be effectively employed. This paper proposes (i) two cooperation models for per-link cooperation (PLC) and per-node cooperation (PNC) for exploiting cooperative diversity in wireless ad hoc networks and (ii) a cooperative routing algorithm for the above models in which best relays are selected for cooperative transmission. First, two cooperation models for PLC and PNC are introduced and represented as an edge-weighted graph with effective link quality. Then, the proposed models are transformed into a simplified graph and a cooperative routing algorithm with O(n2) time is developed, where n is the number of nodes in the network. The effectiveness of the algorithm is confirmed for the two cooperation models using simulation.