The work aims to analyze different expressive types in pharmaceutical packaging design and summarize instructive design strategies based on perception and experience through design practice of pharmaceutical packaging. Based on Peirce's theory of trichotomies, the semiotic types and corresponding expressive purposes of pharmaceutical packaging were analyzed through specific case studies. Additionally, cognitive psychology theories were incorporated to discuss the expressive tendencies and reasons behind symbolization of pharmaceutical packaging symbols. The culturally symbolic pharmaceutical packaging symbols tended to emphasize resemblance, leading readers to constantly seek similarities between two entities, which might result in delayed interpretation of instructive information in pharmaceutical packaging. In addition, perceptual and experiential symbolic pharmaceutical packaging symbols prominently demonstrated instructive qualities, efficiently guiding users' actions and behaviors without being affected by extraneous symbolic systems. In conclusion, symbols derived from perception and experience, possessing the stability of biological and social inheritance and the novelty of emerging symbols within the pharmaceutical system, can be utilized in rhetorical pharmaceutical packaging design. This not only ensures the prioritized and accurate interpretation of instructive information in pharmaceutical packaging but also fosters the innovation of packaging design. It provides new creative directions for pharmaceutical packaging design and holds substantial practical value.