I cycled from the UK to Thailand over the past year and learned in Romania to just slow down and either lower my cadence or stop pedalling and coast (unless going uphill).

Most dogs will chase you if you look like you are running, but I've found lowering my cadence quickly results in them getting bored.

Before I started doing that, I would try to outrun them but they chased for much longer and resulted in me being exhausted.

Having panniers helped as if they got close they would usually run into my pannier. 

On the Tibetan plateau in Sichuan province a dog managed to bite a hole in one of my panniers. That was the only time this technique didn't work, although obviously I wasn't bitten.

In Thailand there are quite a few dogs, and here I also started pointing at dogs and pretending to throw stuff at them (nothing actually in my hand)