As one specific type of local solutions of nonlinear evolution equation, the breathers have the characteristic of envelope oscillation structure. This kind of oscillation is periodic. According to the periodicity of the distribution and evolution directions, there are three kinds of breathers, namely, the Kuznetsov-Ma breather (KMB), the Akhmediev breather (AB), and the general breather (GB). In recent years, the propagation of envelope breathers under the periodic background has been observed in many nonlinear physical fields, including nonlinear optical fibers and hydrodynamics. It is believed that the breathers can arise due to the modulational instability of the periodic waves, and they demonstrate many rich physical properties and dynamic behaviors of interactions. Therefore, recently great attention has been paid to the breathers under the periodic background in nonlinear science. As an important integrable model, the Gerdjikov-Ivanov (GI) equation can be used to describe various nonlinear phenomena in many physical fields such as in the quantum field theory, weak nonlinear dispersive water wave, and nonlinear optics. It is very meaningful to solve various types of solutions of this model to describe the propagation of nonlinear waves. As far as we know, the breather solutions for the GI equation have not been given under the elliptic function background. In this study, firstly, elliptic function solutions of the GI equation are solved by the modified squared wave (MSW) function approach and the traveling wave transformation. Then, we obtain the basic solution of the Lax pair corresponding to the Jacobi elliptic function seed solution. Based on the elliptic function transformation formulas and the integral formulas, the potential function solution can be expressed in terms of the Weierstrass elliptic function. Secondly, by the once iterated Darboux transformation, three types of breather solutions under the elliptic function background are constructed including the GB, the KMB and the AB. In addition, we analyze the dynamic behaviors of these three kinds of breathers, and present their three-dimensional space-time structures. By the twice iterated Darboux transformation, under the dn-periodic background we exhibit three types of interactions between two breathers, i.e. a GB and a KMB, an AB and a KMB, and a GB and an AB. Finally, we also present three types of interactions between two breathers under the general periodic background.