MacOSX has a truly global path setting that precedes any other setting like ~/.bash_profile.
The file /private/etc/paths is a list of pathnames. The order from top to bottom defines the resulting order in the $PATH variable.
After loading /private/etc/paths there is a directory /private/etc/paths.d/ with files in the same style. Those are appended to the $PATH variable.
The default content of /private/etc/paths looks like this:
/usr/bin/bin