Polypropylene (PP) is one of the most promising thermoplastic polymer materials. However, the application of PP is restricted to coating and adhesion fields due to its high crystallinity, low surface energy and weak interfacial layer. This review introduces the modification approaches that can improve the coating or adhesion performance of PP, including the development of chemical oxidation and several novel methods of chemical modification, such as the grafting polymerization with high-energy inducement, organoborane initiator, reversible - addition - fragmentation - chain transfer and atom transfer radical polymerization.