gistfile1.py

import codecs
import requests
import time

# this could be different, but it works for my application, but the content-type definitely matters
fileHeaders = {
    'Content-Type': 'application/octet-stream;charset=text/html;charset=UTF-8'
}

url = 'www.yourfile.com/your.zip'
with codecs.open('your.zip', mode='wb', encoding='utf-8') as handle:
    zip_file = requests.get(url, headers=fileHeaders, prefetch=False)
    for block in zip_file.iter_content(1024):
        if block:
            handle.write(block)