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In the acclaimed Tintin book King Ottokar's Sceptre, Bianca Castafiore gives Tintin a lift and treats him as if she's known him when they haven’t met in any previous books.

In The Seven Crystal Balls at the theatre Haddock remarks that Bianca follows them around everywhere, when he hasn't seen her at all previously.

For me this shows that the chronological order of the books is much different compared to the date they were released.

Are you sure that you are not refering to Tintin in Tibet when he does make such a remark when the pack bearers loudly play the radio during the night?

I haven't read the English version of The Seven Crystal Balls, but if Haddock does say this then it is due to the fact that books like The Calculus Affair and The Red Sea Sharks had been translated and published before Crystal Balls. Sue the publishers.

To me the conversation between Bianca and Tintin (in the car) is rather formal than friendly and there is nothing that refers they've met before.

Again in Seven Crystal Balls (on pg. 11), according to Captain he talks about having seen Bianca several times at the theatre, but not meaning in previous adventures. Tintin remembers having seen her in Syldavia.
After Crystal Balls she actually does hound the Captain, at least from the Archie's point of view. :-)

The meeting between Tintin and Bianca in Ottokar's would have been the first one and a formal one, with Tintin not familiar with the lady's singing at the time. He had suspected that he would be attacked if he were to keep traveling with the farmer in his cart. He probably asked Castafiore to give him a lift for the rest of his journey. Had Tintin met Castafiore earlier, he would surely have got a dose of song and thereby never have said that he would love to hear her.

Bianca is too vain to think of the rest of the world. She seems to know rather than think, that the world pursues her and her songs. Another reason for Castafiore to say that Haddock and Tintin keep following her could be her annoyance, given that she is so proud and vain.
In King Ottokar's Sceptre, Tintin interrupts her performance at the King's palace, in Crystal Balls Snowy interrupts her at the hippodrome.

I think it was actually due to the simple fact that a car would have got to Klow, Tintin's destination, faster than a horse and cart. After all, he does not know that the police chief whom he has just talked to is actually part of the plot to steal the sceptre and assumes that his enemies have no way of knowing that their latest attempt to kill him has been foiled by a fortuitously passing cart full of hay.

I think I misread this while posting earlier. Given that it was Haddock's comment on Castafiore at the Crystal Balls, the reason would have been the other way round.
Since the Captain was a regular at the hippodrome, Castafiore's songs would have kept ringing in his ears, haunting him.
He was very interested in performances like the water-to-whisky magic but the Castafiore part was one annoyance during his visits to the shows.

There is another instance which indicates Tintin had met Castafiore for the first time in Ottokar's. In The Castafiore Emerald wherein upon her arrival at Marlinspike, Castafiore asks Tintin whether he can recall their first meeting in Syldavia.

but in the English edition he specifically references encountering her in Red Sea Sharks

Yet another example of an old complaint of mine: that the translators failed to maintain the spirit of the original French text and instead came up with their own words.

Just to clarify things: in the original French, Tintin and Castafiore do meet for the first time in "Ottokar"; and when Tintin tells Haddock about it in "Crystal Balls", the latter remarks "You known everyone" (a reference to the fact that Tintin had previously identified knife-thrower Ramon Zarate as General Alcazar).

Moderator Note: Haven't you beaten this drum enough? The pragmatic need to treat the stories in the order which they came out (which was at the discretion of Casterman) makes the change necessary in context; it hardly changes the "spirit" of the books. But anyway, the topic has been discussed at length elsewhere, and doesn't need to be repeated here.
The Tintinologist Team