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Well, we know that the consonant-vowel structure of flood is CCVC. Move your mouse pointer over the structure to see if you chose the right syllable structure.
In this structure, you can see that there is only one syllable, and two onsets. This results because it is the only way to incorporate all consonants and vowels into the syllable structure. Such groups of onsets (or codas, in some cases) are called tautosyllabic consonant clusters.
Now, what about a word like cutlass 
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First, we syllabify the vowels:
Then we provide onsets where possible:
Now, the final consonant clearly has to be syllabified as the coda of the final syllable (just like in racket), since it has no other option:
But, what about the other consonant? There would appear to be two possible syllabifications:
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Which of the two possibilities would you choose? Why?
Go on the next section to see a discussion of which of the two is argued for here.