In this technical note, an adaptive cooperative output regulation problem for a class of nonlinear multi-agent systems is considered. The cooperative output regulation problem is first converted into an adaptive stabilization problem for an augmented multi-agent system. A distributed adaptive control law with adoption of Nussbaum gain technique is then proposed to globally stabilize this augmented system. This control scheme is designed such that, in the presence of unknown control direction and large parameter variations in each agent, the closed-loop system maintains global stability and the output of each agent tracks a class of prescribed signals asymptotically.