The developed market of Europe is an important part of container shipping in the world.The analysis of its market development potential is the prerequisite for Chinese enterprises to participate in the European container port investment. Container port market is affected by many factors,and hinterland production method is the mainstream of the current method,but the method has some one-sidedness.This paper proposes the optimal path model,and studies the north Adriatic Sea port group as a typical case.The analysis shows that the optimal path model has a good adaptability in large-scale container port market size analysis and can provide reference for investment decision.