CSS is obviously always coupled to HTML in the sense that CSS applies styling and layout to elements in HTML. If you don't have an element to delimit the chunk of content you want to style, you cant do it with CSS. The point is just that the markup HTML should be independent of any particular presentation.

You don't have to use divs, you can use semantic elements (P, whatever) if that is appropriate for the content.

You definitely might not just as well use a table. The trouble with tables for layout is that they have the wrong semantics, which means they makes the page less accessible.