It's still manually initiated, but I wrote a bash script which takes care of the process nicely.
I just pass the package name and the test version and then:
1. It clones the package in a temporary directory
2. Used sed to change the alpha macro from 0 to 1 which I use to control the Source URL
3. Runs "rpmdev-bumpspec -n <version>"
4. Runs "spectool -g <spec>"
5. Runs "rpkg build <COPR Project>
Thanks,
Richard