For a simple string with space delimitation, using Dict would be quite fast, please see the code as below
def getStringCount(mnstr:str, sbstr:str='')->int:
""" Assumes two inputs string giving the string and
substring to look for number of occurances
Returns the number of occurances of a given string
"""
x = dict()
x[sbstr] = 0
sbstr = sbstr.strip()
for st in mnstr.split(' '):
if st not in [sbstr]:
continue
try:
x[st]+=1
except KeyError:
x[st] = 1
return x[sbstr]
s = 'foo bar foo test one two three foo bar'
getStringCount(s,'foo')