System variables retentive setting (a.k.a. SET PERSIST)

I use 0 for autocommit variable. I was surprised a bit to find that setting

SET global AUTOCOMMIT=0;

is valid only until service restart. Then I get default (1) value again. To make it persistent I wrote it into my.cfg/my.ini file. Now it works.
But I would like to ask possibility to set the variable usind "SET" command with some keyword to make it retentive.