python声明了 coding = utf-8不生效

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding = utf-8
counter = 100 # 赋值整型变量
miles = 1000.0
name = 'baby '

print counter
print miles
print name

明明声明了编码格式，但是运行时还是会报错：

C:\Python27\python.exe E:/pythonLearning/test1/test/valiabletest.py
  File "E:/pythonLearning/test1/test/valiabletest.py", line 3
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xe8' in file E:/pythonLearning/test1/test/valiabletest.py on line 3, but no encoding declared; see http://python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/ for details

Process finished with exit code 1

尝试着把 # coding = utf-8 等号两边的空格去掉，再次运行时就正常了，其中的原因还未搞明白，这不是违背PEP规范吗？难道说声明的时候，等号两边有空格就无法识别吗？