An experimental and numerical analysis of the thermomechanical behavior that takes place in copper rods during its drawing is presented. To this end, a coupled thermomechanical finite element formulation accounting for large viscoplastic strains and mechanical coupling effects is used to simulate the problem. The proposed methodology consists in four stages respectively devoted to tensile testing, wire drawing in laboratory at different drawing velocities, mechanical characterization via modelling, and simulation of the material behavior in these two tests and, finally, experimental validation of the numerical predictions of temperature at the die exit. The derivation of the material parameters accounting for both isotropic hardening and rate-dependent effects is particularly addressed. Finally, it is shown that this characterization procedure provides an adequate description of the thermomechanical material response during the wire drawing process.