Compared with traditional lubricating oils and greases, solid lubricants can meet the lubrication requirements under extreme conditions. Incorporating a solid lubricant and suitable reinforced phase particles into the copper matrix to form a copper-based self-lubricating composite coating with its friction and wear resistance significantly improved. Based on the review of literatures on copper-based self-lubricating composite coating at home and abroad, the scope of application and mechanism of its composites, i.e. the commonly used solid lubricants and reinforced phase are summed up. The coordination of lubrication performance and strength is a key to the research of copper-based self-lubricating coatings. Then the traditional “thermal” techniques of preparing copper-based self-lubricating composite coatings are introduced, such as powder metallurgy, laser cladding, thermal spraying, etc., which show certain limitation. By comparison, it is found that the cold spraying with “low temperature” conditions has an irreplaceable advantage in the preparation of copper-based self-lubricating coatings. It can effectively overcome the problems of the above “thermal” techniques and has great potential applications. It is a challenge to obtain coatings with large thickness, high bonding strength, good self-lubricating properties and good adaptability to complex and severe serving environments. Therefore, it is urgent to develop new composite coatings with multiple lubricating phases/reinforced phases or an attempt of all kinds of cold spray hyper techniques.