In this work, we develop coarse-grained (CG) force fields for water, where the effective CG intermolecular interactions between particles are estimated from an accurate description of the macroscopic experimental vapour–liquid equilibria data by means of a molecular-based equation of state. The statistical associating fluid theory for Mie (generalised Lennard-Jones) potentials of variable range (SAFT-VR Mie) is used to parameterise spherically symmetrical (isotropic) force fields for water. The resulting SAFT-γ CG models are based on the Mie (8-6) form with size and energy parameters that are temperature dependent; the latter dependence is a consequence of the angle averaging of the directional polar interactions present in water. At the simplest level of CG where a water molecule is represented as a single bead, it is well known that an isotropic potential cannot be used to accurately reproduce all of the thermodynamic properties of water simultaneously. In order to address this deficiency, we propose two CG potential models of water based on a faithful description of different target properties over a wide range of temperatures: our CGW1-vle model is parameterised to match the saturated-liquid density and vapour pressure; our other CGW1-ift model is parameterised to match the saturated-liquid density and vapour–liquid interfacial tension. A higher level of CG corresponding to two water molecules per CG bead is also considered: the corresponding CGW2-bio model is developed to reproduce the saturated-liquid density and vapour–liquid interfacial tension in the physiological temperature range, and is particularly suitable for the large-scale simulation of bio-molecular systems. A critical comparison of the phase equilibrium and transport properties of the proposed force fields is made with the more traditional atomistic models.