The wiki has a good one about playing a beginner's game as Brazil. It can be found overhere:
http://www.paradoxian.org/vickywiki/index.php/Main_Page
But it seems that was written before the Revolutions add on, so I'll paraphrase it and give a general summary here:
1. Start a game as Brazil. This will give you a large country with a lot of good resources that will probably not experience war (unless you're playing VIP) and the potential to become a Great Power.
2. First thing is to choose a technology to research. Since Brazil is isolated, it can ignore Army/Navy techs for a while without worrying about being overrun. Look at the cultural techs. Does the cultural tech available to research say it gives a prestige bonus? If so, research it. If not, research the economics tech, or maybe the industrial one.
3. Check the world market. Make sure you're selling all of the resources Brazil makes and not selling anything it needs. Be very aware of the world market and check it frequently, because forgetting you're selling something or buying something can lead to economical problems. Do not put anything on auto-trade. (The AI isn't trustworthy.)
4. Look at your budget. Set Tariffs as high as they will go. Set lower-class taxes to between 40-60%, as much as you need. Most of your population at the start of the game is lower class, so you will make the most taxing them. Middle class and upper class taxes should not exceed 50% ever (it results in over-taxation which demotes them from upper/middle to lower, like your aristocrats will become farmers or laborers. This can be useful in playing certain nations, but we want to avoid that at the moment.) Upper class taxes should be set as low as possible, why will be apparent in a moment.
5. Set education budget as high as it will go. Crime fighting and defense budget should also be raised eventually, but it's not as critical. Army maintenance is rather important, so keep that high.
6. Let the game time advance. Pretty soon there will be a scripted uprising of one rebel in a province in the middle of the country. Move your army out to defeat it. Make sure it has maximum manpower (through clicking on the fist in the upper-right when the unit is selected) and assign it a general assuming you have the leadership. If it captures any provinces, you will need to put your armies there to take them back.
7. When you have the money, go to the Rio de Janeiro province. This province has the highest population in your country. Bring up the population and pick some laborers. Check the "convert to clerks" button. Buy whatever you need to buy from the world market to convert them to clerks. (This population should be decent, but not too high. In the 10,000-20,000 range is plenty.) Convert them to clerks, then notice there's a "convert to capitalists" button. Buy the items you need to convert them to capitalists from the world market and then activate it. Note that you may not use as much money as it says it will take because it takes less money the lower population amount the POP is. (Though I don't have the formula right in front of me.) You now have capitalists!
8. Here's the fun part: since we're interventionist government, we can't build factories by ourselves. So upper-class taxes should be set as low as possible. Look up the capitalist POP details. You should see the number that represents the money they're saving start to climb. When it reaches a certain level, they will start to build a factory or railroad. (Assuming you have the tech to do it.)
9. You should be getting prestige from your cultural techs. This will give you more diplomatic points, through which you can improve your relations with other nations. Peru is the other South American nation most likely to declare war on you, so spend your points to build its relations to +200 with you, then offer them an alliance. (Your choice if regular or defensive. I suggest defensive because they will go to war with other countries sometimes.) Having an alliance prevents them from attacking you and gives you allies if you are attacked. Consider doing this with other nations nearby as well.
10. Eventually your first factory will be built in Rio. Pick a laborer or farmer POP in the same state (not necessarily same province) and convert it to craftsmen. Make three total craftsmen groups, and two clerks. (Make sure they're a good size!) Then bring up the factory screen and add the workers you created to work at the factory. Turn the game time on and watch what resources it makes and what resource it creates. Sometimes you will make factories that use resources you have to import. In which case, you'll either need to buy those resources from the world market, or just let your factories sit there... But importing too many resources can devastate your economy. So be careful.
11. Eventually you will get more and more factories and have money to promote more capitalists in other states. Always make sure there's a high enough population in these states to work the factories.
12. Your literacy will eventually give you excess research points, or a lucky event will do so. When this happens, begin raising your diplomacy with a super-power, like the UK or France or Germany or the USA. When it's high enough, offer to buy their technology in exchange for money. This requires a lot of money (like 40,000 per tech) but it's the only way to catch up, and is great for advancing in those army or naval techs you've been ignoring.
13. If you ever need a military, make sure you have the right amounts of liquor, small arms, and canned food, at least. For this reason it's good to have a stockpile of these goods bought from the World Market. (Or to stockpile them yourself if you were lucky enough to get a factory that makes them.
Every few years (or months) you should get random events asking you to make selections. Some of them are easy (do you want to support education? Of course,) others not so much. (Especially things like Jominian vs. Clausewitz attitudes.) These are more nuanced events you're best off reading the more in-depth guides for.
Someday you might want to start playing the colonial game. This will take several technologies to grab land that is not yet claimed, so it's better to steal colonial claims by other countries. This can easily be done by declaring a colonial war, but consider the consequences. First it takes prestige, then it's likely that the other country will never offer or accept peace. On the plus side, a colonial war means your homeland will not be invaded...
But with this strategy, you will have an easily managed game where your prestige will be sky-high (enough to get you to be a Great Power by itself) but your war score and military score will probably be far behind the other Great Powers. There's not much you can do about that, though.
Also note that this guide completely ignores Plurality, Militancy, and Consciousness. Here's a brief summary:
1. Consciousness indicates how much a POP is aware of his situation in society and what he/she can do about it. It causes them to vote more in line with their ideology (conservative, liberal, etc.). Whether you want a POP of high consciousness or not depends on what type of government you want to put in power. When playing Brazil, since you have so many Clergymen, there's not much you can do to affect them because Clergymen automatically raise the consciousness of your upper class POPs, and decrease it of the lower-class POPs. Later if you get a government that doesn't have "Moralism" as a value, you can convert Clergymen to other POP types. (And depending on the situation, I suggest you do.)
2. Militancy is a score that indicates how likely the POP of a province is to rise up against you in revolt. You ALWAYS want this number to be as low as possible. 0-4 is generally okay. 5+ is not. You can decrease it by lowering taxes, granting better social programs (and funding them!), and leaving a military unit in the province.
3. Plurality represents how accustomed your country is to democracy and accepting new ideas. (...sorta.) With Brazil being a constitutional monarchy, this is neither good nor bad. However, higher plurality means better education, less militancy when a POP doesn't get the government it wants elected, and it attracts immigrants from other countries. (Which Brazil can really benefit from.) It'll take a while, but having a good plurality score will help out, generally. (When you play a nation like Prussia or Russia with an absolute monarchy, however, plurality can be a very bad thing.)
So, having played Brazil, what other countries are good to learn with? I suggest Japan, because it starts with a few factories, is also isolated and protected from war (even more so), and you'll also get the unique experience of starting as an Uncivilized Country. It's very hard to lose as Japan, and given its greater capacity for industry and military, it can easily get in the top five (or at least top eight) by the end game.
Good luck!