The calculation of ultimate bearing capacity is a significant issue in the design of Concrete Filled Steel Tubular (CFST)arch bridges. Based on the space beam theory, this paper provides a calculation method for determining the ultimate strength of CFST structures. The accuracy of this method and the applicability of the stress-strain relationships were validated by comparing different existing confined concrete uniaxial constitutive relationships and experimental results. Comparison of these results indicated that this method using the confined concrete uniaxial stress-strain relationships can be used to calculate the ultimate strength and CFST behavior with satisfactory accuracy. The calculation results are stable and seldom affected by concrete constitutive relationships. The method is therefore valuable in the practice of engineering design. Finally, the ultimate strength of an arch bridge with span of 330 m was investigated by the proposed method and the nonlinear behavior was discussed.