I'm not talking about number formatting...

What I am trying to do is color the groups alternately... that is, the
first column of a pivot table has the highest level grouping (like
country), then the second column has a lower level of grouping (like
city) and finally the data area has population, for example.

In a large pivot table of information, how would I (how could I?)
format the pivot table so that every other country grouping (column A)
is gray regardless of city, and the other (alternate) countries are
left white (or clear), regardless of city?

Is this possible without having to do it manually?