We address the interplay between global and local gauge non-Abelian symmetries in lattice gauge theories with multicomponent scalar fields. We consider two-dimensional lattice scalar non-Abelian gauge theories with a local SOðN c Þ (N c ≥ 3) and a global OðN f Þ invariance, obtained by partially gauging a maximally OðN f N c Þ-symmetric multicomponent scalar model. Correspondingly, the scalar fields belong to the coset S N f N c −1 =SOðN c Þ, where S N is the N-dimensional sphere. In agreement with the Mermin-Wagner theorem, these lattice SOðN c Þ gauge models with N f ≥ 3 do not have finite-temperature transitions related to the breaking of the global non-Abelian OðN f Þ symmetry. However, in the zero-temperature limit they show a critical behavior characterized by a correlation length that increases exponentially with the inverse temperature, similarly to nonlinear OðNÞ σ models. Their universal features are investigated by numerical finite-size scaling methods. The results show that the asymptotic low-temperature behavior belongs to the universality class of the two-dimensional RP N f −1 model.