Compared with the traditional induction motors, five-phase squirrel cage induction motor (FSCIM) have the advantages of lower torque ripple and single-phase power, flexible control strategy, higher power density and fault-tolerant operation, which has been widely applied on electrical vehicles, rail transit, underwater vehicles and so on. This paper presents an analytical design optimization method based on the coupling of electromagnetic equivalent circuit (EEC) and differential evolution algorithm (DEA). Furthermore, the difference between three and five-phase winding on harmonic specific leakage permeance is investigated in detail. The nonlinear and oeolotropic influences of design geometrical parameters (slots openings, main dimension ratio, yoke height, airgap length, etc.) on the performances of the basic FSCIM model are evaluated with analytical model. For more accurate results, the harmonic characteristics of five-phase winding structure, iron core saturation, rotor slot skew width, stator end winding, slot leakage inductance and stator and rotor slot structure are considered. Meanwhile, the efficiency, power factor, maximum torque, slot fill factor and material consumption of FSCIM are calculated as the comprehensive objective function. The transient finite element analysis (TFEA) and experimental test verify the accuracy of the proposed optimum model. In addition, the feasibility of the multi objective optimization design scheme provided by the analytical model is verified by TFEA.