Heavy flavour physics provides excellent opportunities to indirectly search for new physics at very high energy scales and to study hadron properties for deep understanding of the strong interaction. The LHCb experiment has been playing a leading role in the study of heavy flavour physics since the start of the LHC operations about ten years ago, and made a range of high-precision measurements and unexpected discoveries, which may have far-reaching implications on the field of particle physics. This review highlights a selection of the most influential physics results on CP violation, rare decays, and heavy flavour production and spectroscopy obtained by LHCb using the data collected during the first two operation periods of the LHC. The upgrade plan of LHCb and the physics prospects are also briefly discussed.