As far as how Excel scales the size of the circles in a bubble chart, my copy of Excel gives me options for having the size of the circle be related to "area" (size=f(r^2)) or width (size=f(r)) where r is the radius of each circle. A quick test shows how this works:
1) I set up a fixed grid chart like yours, based on fixed (non-overlapping) positions of the 3 circles. I used random numbers for the circle size sorted in descending order (so the first circle would always be largest).
2) Then I compared the size of the three circles in both area and width options. My observations:
3a) The largest circle was always the same size, and this was the same for both area and width options.
3b) In width/radius mode, the radius of each smaller circle was proportional to the max circle size -- r(i)/r(max)=z(i)/z(max)
3c) In area mode, the area (pi*r^2) of each circle was proportional to the max circle size -- a(i)/a(max)=z(i)/z(max) -> r^2(i)/r^2(max)=z(i)/z(max)
3d) I cannot tell how Excel decides how large to make the largest circle, but there is a "scale bubble size to" option that allows me to make the bubbles larger or smaller.

It's not clear to me what key elements of the chart you are trying to make larger/smaller here. I would expect that, with that information, it should mostly be an algebra/geometry problem to figure out where the center of each circle should be and how large to make each bubble to get the desired effect.