For Unicode, collation names may include a version number to indicate the version of the Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) on which the collation is based. UCA-based collations without a version number in the name use the version-4.0.0 UCA weight keys. For example:

utf8_unicode_ci (with no version named) is based on UCA 4.0.0 weight keys >(http://www.unicode.org/Public/UCA/4.0.0/allkeys-4.0.0.txt).

utf8_unicode_520_ci is based on UCA 5.2.0 weight keys (http://www.unicode.org/Public/UCA/5.2.0/allkeys.txt).

For Unicode, the xxx_general_mysql500_ci collations preserve the pre-5.1.24 ordering of the original xxx_general_ci collations and permit upgrades for tables created before MySQL 5.1.24. For more information, see Section 2.11.3, “Checking Whether Tables or Indexes Must Be Rebuilt”, and Section 2.11.4, “Rebuilding or Repairing Tables or Indexes”.

Source : https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/charset-collation-names.html