CaKFe4As4 ( 1144) is a unique stoichiometric iron-based superconductor which harbours high upper critical fields and large critical current densities. In this work, we describe a study to optimize the synthesis conditions of stoichiometric polycrystalline samples of CaKFe4As4 and asses their structural, magnetic and transport properties. The samples were prepared over a wide temperature range (900-1100 • C) and the pure phase formation is centered around 955 • C. Outside this temperature region, impurity phases of KFe2As2 and CaFe2As2 can also form. Magnetic susceptibility and resistivity measurements establish that the critical temperature reaches ∼34 K for the optimum synthesis conditions and the critical current reaches 2 × 10 4 A-cm −2 . The post-annealing process demonstrates the stability of the 1144 phase up to 500 • C, however, under higher temperature annealing, phase degradation occurs. Our study indicates that the formation of phase-pure 1144 occurs over a much narrower window and its highly prone to multi-phase formation as compared with the 122 family. As a result, the superconducting properties are enhanced for the pure 1144 phase but they are likely to be affected by the interand intra-granular behaviour originating from the microstructural nature of polycrystalline CaKFe4As4, similar to other iron-based superconductors. Based on our study, we construct the phase diagram for polycrystalline 1144 and compared it with that reported for 1144 single crystal.