A warning can be raised within google.api_core.retry.retry_target depending on whether the return value of target() is awaitable in the following way:

if inspect.isawaitable(target()):
            raise ValueError("Incorrect use of Retry in async code. Use AsyncRetry instead")

This will ensure that google.api_core.retry.Retry is not incorrectly used in async clients/code and will suggest users to use google.api_core.retry_async.AsyncRetry instead

related issue: fix retries in async client