Go to the Appearance tab in overview settings, and go to the Background sub-tab.
If you want all player ships to have a colored row by default, simply tick all of the boxes. You can choose different colors based on standing, corp affiliation etc. and drag the options up and down the list to determine their priority of a pilot falls into multiple categories.
You can’t color code by ship-type or anything of that sort, but its very useful for spotting player ships the moment they come on-grid with you.