The increasing China′s steel output is at odds with the shortage of high-quality coking coal resources and environmental problems. Therefore, it is urgent to optimize ironmaking process, realize energy saving and emission reduction of blast furnace. Improving the carbon utilization rate is an effective measure to reduce the coke ratio of blast furnace and CO2 emission. As a kind of iron-carbon composite burden that is expected to realize industrial application, ferro coke has been extensively studied. Its high reactivity can effectively reduce the temperature of the thermal reserve zone in blast furnace, improve the smelting efficiency, thus reduce coke ratio and carbon emission. In this work, the development history and current research status of ferro coke were reviewed and the characteristics of different ferro coke preparation processes and the properties of ferro coke were compared. The investment cost of preparing ferro coke by directly adding iron ore powder to coal is small, which can be realized by using existing coke oven facilities. However, the temperature of coke oven should be strictly controlled, otherwise the life of coke oven will be reduced. Hot pressing ferro coke preparation process can use a large amount of weakly bonded coal or non-bonded coal, the prepared ferro coke has high reactivity and post-reaction strength, has realized industrial production and application. Cold pressing ferro coke preparation process can further reduce the energy consumption of coking, but the strength of ferro coke needs to be optimized. In coking process, the iron-bearing minerals added to coal are reduced to metal iron, and its oxidation reaction catalyzes the gasification of ferro coke in the blast furnace. In view of the strength deterioration of ferro coke, a solution is proposed to add additives containing metaplast such as toluene, ethylbenzene, oxylene and long branched alkanes during the coking process, which gives a feasible way for preparing high strength and high reactivity ferro coke that meets the requirements of blast furnace. The results show that the mixed charging mode of ferro coke and iron bearing burden can not only reduce carbon emission, but also does not affect the permeability of blast furnace. The synergistic optimization of reactivity and strength of ferro coke, the behavior of ferro coke in blast furnace and the effect of ferro coke on energy consumption of blast furnace are the key research directions in the future.