An experiment has been conducted in detail to study the turbulent heat transfer in horizontal helically coiled tubes over a wide range of experimental parameters. We found that the enhancement of heat transfer in the coils results from the effects of turbulent and secondary flows. With Reynolds number increasing to a high level, the contribution of the secondary flow becomes less to enhance heat transfer, and the average heat transfer coefficient of the coil is closer to that in straight tubes under the same conditions. The local heat transfer coefficients are not evenly distributed along both the tube axis and the periphery on the cross section. The local heat transfer coefficients on the outside are three or four times those on the inside, which is half of the average heat transfer. A correlation is proposed to describe the distribution of the heat transfer coefficients at a cross section. The average cross-section heat transfer coefficients are distributed along the tube axis. The average value at the outlet section should not be taken as the average heat transfer coefficient.