To improve the efficiency of the wireless power transfer (WPT) system without increasing the system size, a central bulge ferrite core with a novel configuration is proposed. The mutual inductance between magnetic coupling structures is able to increase obviously, which is approved by eigenfunction expansion method. In this paper, the mathematical models of the planar core and the central bulge core are established, respectively, as two types of the mutual inductance are calculated in same condition. The structure parameters of the central bulge ferrite core are further optimized by Maxwell magnetic field simulation. Experiments are conducted to compare the WPT efficiency of two types of ferrite cores in improving the efficiency of WPT system, in which the influence of transmission distance, lateral misalignment, and load variation are taken into account. The results show that central bulge ferrite core has better performance in WPT efficiency than the planar one, even in the case of long power transfer distance and lateral misalignment.