They're generally unique within a country but not between countries. Eg "Intrepid Mines trades in Canada on the TSX as IAU whereas in the US, IAU is the iShares gold trust ETF" [0]
[0] https://www.quora.com/Can-2-publicly-traded-companies-have-t...
[0] https://www.quora.com/Can-2-publicly-traded-companies-have-t...